CVEPS 


UC-NRLF 


B    3    33M    S3fl 


FRANKLIN  P.  ADAMS 


OVERSET 


BOOKS  BY 
FRANKLIN  P.  ADAMS 

AMONG  Us  MORTALS 

BY  AND  LARGE 

IN  OTHER  WORDS 

OVERSET 

SOMETHING  ELSE  AGAIN 

TOBOGGANING  ON  PARNASSUS 

WEIGHTS  AND  MEASURES 


OVERSET 


BY 
FRANKLIN  P.  ADAMS 


GARDEN  CITY  NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
1922 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY 
DOUBLEDAY,    PAGE    &    COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED,  INCLUDING   THAT  OF  TRANSLATION 
INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES,  INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

AT 
THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS,  GARDEN   CITY,  N.  Y. 

First  Edition 


To 
HERBERT  BAYARD  SWOPE 

WITHOUT   WHOSE    FRIENDLY 

AID     AND     COUNSEL     EVERY 

LINE     IN     THIS     BOOK     WAS 

WRITTEN 


984698 


OVERSET 


OVERSET  M:r:j; 

EVERYTHING,  good  authority  tells  us, 
is  lower  in  price.  Even  the  $5  silk 
shirts  are  down  to  $8.50,  reduced  from 
$13.50. 

EVERY  time  we  tell  anybody  to  cheer 
up,  things  might  be  worse,  we  run  away 
for  fear  we  might  be  asked  to  specify 
how. 

ANOTHER  promise  we  make  is  that,  if 
elected  mayor,  we  never  shall  write  a 
letter  or  issue  what  is  known  as  a  State 
ment,  beginning  "My  attention  has  been 
called." 

Nor  shall  we  ever  employ  the  cost- 
nothing  and  patronizing  brand  of  flat 
tery.  It  is  common  with  politicians.  It 
is  the  kind  that,  if  used  in  the  preceding 


Overset 

paragraph,  would  have  made  it  read:  "If 
elected  mayor  of  this  great  city." 

It  is  the  kind  of  locution  used  by  Mr. 
La  Guardia,  when  he  says  "I  intend  to 
give  the  thinking  Republicans  an  op 
portunity  to  -protest/'  Designedly  or 
unconsciously,  that  is  supposed  to  make 
the  non-thinking  Republican  think  he  is 
a  thinking  Republican.  If  a  man  de 
pendent  on  public  favor,  which  is  to  say 
votes,  had  to  rely  on  the  thinking  any 
bodies,  he  might  as  well  decide  to  End 
It  All.  It's  the  non-thinking  lads  that 
our  appeal,  if  any,  is  made  to. 

Which  reminds  us  of  the  adored  Amer 
icans  slogan :  "A  Paper  for  People  Who 
Think."  Who  think  what?  Who  think, 
our  completion  of  the  sentence  runs,  that 
the  American  is  a  paper  they  like  to  read. 

"READERS  ask,"  writes  Mr.  Arthur 
Brisbane,  "why  do  newspapers  print  so 
much  about  that  miserable  Stillman 
case?"  Answer:  "Because  such  cases 
are  valuable  in  the  present,  frightening 
fools,  enlightening  the  public,  warning 


Overset 

women/'  Our  comment  is,  "Rot,"  re 
inforced  by  a  pair  of  "Pishes!"  News 
papers  print  so  much  about  it  because 
their  editors  think  that  is  the  kind  of 
stuff  people  like  to  read.  Wherein  the 
editors  are  utterly  and  unassailably 
right. 

As  to  whether  the  publication  of  such 
cases  does  what  is  known  as  good,  we 
have  no  conviction.  Our  opinion  is  that 
they  serve  as  a  warning  to  some  and  as 
a  model  for  others.  As  age  creeps  upon 
us  we  are  inclined  more  and  more  to  the 
belief  that  the  amount  of  good  or  harm 
done  by  anybody  or  anything  is  ridicu 
lously  exaggerated. 

As  HE  ended  his  training,  Dempsey 
whistled — though  what  he  whistled,  if 
anything,  the  reporters  didn't  say;  and 
Carpentier,  at  the  close  of  his  prepara 
tion,  appeared  untroubled.  Putting  two 
and  two  together,  a  trick  that  years  of 
earnest  journalism  has  taught  us,  we 
shrewdly  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that 
both  fighters  are  confident  of  the  result. 

3 


Overset 

On  Reading  Sara  Teasdale's 
"Shadow  and  Flame" 

My  hungry  heart  is  riding 
The  savage  waves  and  blue; 

Straining,  it  seeks  the  harbor — 
The  haven  that  is  you. 

Angry  the  green-black  billows; 

Too  wild  the  course  and  long; 
Crashes  my  heart  against  the  rocks, 

And  breaks — but  into  song. 

Excepting  Miss  Edna  St.  Vincent 
Millay's  poetry,  we  like  Miss  Teasdale's 
better  than  that  of  anybody  else  now 
writing.  Here  is  the  Cinderella  com 
plex;  she's  got  the  Teasdale,  she's  got 
the  Teasdale,  she's  got  the  Sara  Teas- 
dale  Blues. 

IN  THE  December  Smart  Set  one  of 
the  editors — Mencken,  probably — con 
fessed  his  distaste  for  games  of  all  sorts, 
as  a  participant  and  a  spectator.  Per 
haps  that  accounts  for  the  method  of 
much  of  Mr.  Mencken's  criticisms.  For 
he  is  a  frequent  footfaulter,  and  often  he 

4 


Overset 

should  be  penalized  for  holding  and  off 
side  playing.  A  little  of  the  game  spirit 
doesn't  hurt  even  a  critic. 

WATCHING  an  aeroplane  race,  some  of 
the  spectators  tell  us,  is  more  fun  than 
watching  a  yacht  race.  The  boredom 
endures  less  than  an  hour. 

THIS  is  our  eighteenth  pre-Christmas 
columnar  period.  A  gayer  and  a  wiser 
man,  we  realize  that  our  exhortations  to 
an  indifferent  universe  to  shop  early 
never  aroused  one  person  to  the  rath 
purchase.  As  far  as  we  are  concerned, 
shop  as  late  as  you  like,  or — and  this  is 
to  prove  to  Upton  Sinclair  that  the  ad 
vertising  department  doesn't  control  us 
— not  at  all. 

WHEN  the  Puritan  Sabbath  comes  to 
make  us  more  than  merry,  the  conduct 
and  behavior  of  artists  at  Sunday  con 
certs  may  be  of  more  critical  momen- 
tousness  than  their  performance.  This 
is  forecast  by  the  attitude  of  the  Pleas- 

5 


Overset 

antville  Journal,  which  says:  "Miss 
Welch's  demure  demeanor  with  the  harp 
marked  her  as  a  master  of  the  instru 
ment." 

During  the  Puritan  Sunday  Dinner 
the  Blue  Hungarian  Band  will  play 
'The  Beautiful  Blue  Danube"  and 
"The  Blue  Alsatian  Mountain." 

"Any  more  of  that  stuff/'  telephones 
the  third  assistant  city  editor,  "gets  the 
blue  pencil." 

CANDOR  of  an  unusual  whiteness  is 
Mr.  Francis  Hackett's,  whose  dedication 
in  "The  Invisible  Censor"  is: 

TO 

MY  WIFE 
SIGNE  TOKSVIG 

Whose  lack  of  interest 
in  this  book  has  been 
my  constant  desperation. 

For  years  we  have  crusaded  against 
the  hypocrisy  of  the  usual  dedication. 
Perhaps  Mr.  Hackett's  intrepidity  will 
arouse  an  author  to  dedicate  a  book: 
6 


Overset 

TO 

MY  DAUGHTERS 
SPENDA  AND  BLOWA 

but  for  whose  extravagant 
idleness  I  should  not  have 
had  to  write  this  unworthy  novel. 
Or— 

TO 
MY  WIFE 

In  spite  of  whose  irritability 
I  got  this  book  written. 

TICKETS  to  the  Dempsey  fight  last 
night  were  priced  $28.75,  or  almost  as 
much  as  a  private's  monthly  Army  pay. 

The  Uses  of  Advertisement 

A  charm   that  delicately  glows 

From  all  Van    Raalte's  silken   hose. — Advt. 

Tecla,  Tecla,  little  pearls, 
Round  the  necks  of  lovely  girls, 
Dim  the  diamonds  in  the  sky 
(And  the  price  is  not  so  high). 

Needles  and  thimbles,  needles  and  thimbles, 
When  a  girl  marries  she  buys  'em  at  Gimbel's. 

As  I  walked  through  the  garden  gap, 
I  met  a  man  in  a  stylish  cap; 

7 


Overset 

A  stock  in  his  hand  and  shoes  on  his  feet, 
He  bought  them  all  from  Rogers,  Peet. 

Franklin  Simon  met  a  pieman 
Down  in  Union  Square, 
Said  Franklin  Simon  to  the  pieman, 
"We're  slashing  underwear."    J.  Q. 

How  sleep  the  brave  who  lay  their  heads 
To  nightly  rest  on  Simmons  Beds! 

Boundless  are  the  possibilities.  A 
lot  of  firms  might  combine,  each  paying 
a  pro-rata  share,  thus: 

Twas  the  night  before  Christmas,  and  all 
through  the  house  built  by  the  Thomp- 
son-Starrett  Co. 

Not  a  creature  was  stirring,  not  even  a 
mouse ; 

The  Onyx  Stockings  were  hung  by  the  Tap 
estry  Brick  chimney  with  care, 

In  hopes  that  St.  Nicholas,  published  by 
The  Century  Co.,  soon  would  be  there; 

The  children  were  snuggled  all  safe  in  their 
Simmons  Beds, 

While  visions  of  Huyler's  sugar  plums 
danced  through  their  heads,  on  which 
Packer's  Tar  Soap  had  been  used; 

And  mamma  in  her  Sealpackerchief  and  I  in 
my  Dobbs  cap, 

Had  just  settled  our  brains  for  a  long  winter 
nap.  .  .  . 

8 


Overset 

"GUESS  who  this  is?"  telephoned 
Dulcinea  yesterday.  "Right — the  very 
first  time.  Well,  1  was  thinking  that  my 
'kiddies'  always  wear  'nighties'  'cause 
they're  so  'comfy/  Can  you  hear  me? 
Oh,  all  rightie." 


WHATEVER  you  may  think  of  young 
Mr.  Garland's  refusal  of  the  million  dol 
lar  legacy  and  his  reasons  for  the  refusal, 
you  cannot  say  that  he  is  cowardly  or 
ignoble.  Yet  when  the  stories  were 
printed  to  the  effect  that  he  picked  up 
those  notions  in  Greenwich  Village,  the 
implication  is  that  Greenwich  Village  is 
a  place  where  unsound  ideas  are  to  be 
absorbed,  and  that  the  actual  teaching 
of  them  is  done  in  some  Little  Red 
Schoolhouse  hard  by  Christopher  Street. 
As  a  m.  of  f.,  an  impressionable  young 
man  would  be  more  likely  to  reject  a 
legacy  of  a  million  dollars  after  a  walk 
up  Fifth  Avenue  than  after  a  week  of 
the  Village's  excitement  or  dullness,  as 
the  case  may  be. 

9 


Overset 

THERE  were  fewer  papers  in  those 
days,  but  one  can  imagine  the  Moab 
Monitor  asking  Ruth,  editorially,  where 
she  picked  up  those  chimerical  ideas 
about  Thy  People  being  My  People,  etc. 

And  Patrick  Henry  undoubtedly  got 
his  notions  about  the  desirability  of  Lib 
erty  and  Death  from  association  with  the 
Third  and  Fourth  Families  of  Virginia. 

OF  COURSE,  what  Mrs.  Harding  and 
Mrs.  Wilson  talked  about  at  the  White 
House  has  not  been  published.  But  as 
Mrs.  Harding  was  leaving,  Mrs.  Wilson, 
"suddenly  recollecting  details  of  the 
White  House  organization  she  had  for 
gotten  to  impart,  invited  her  back, 
and  they  withdrew  again  to  the  White 
Room,  where  they  talked  for  another 
twenty  minutes."  What  these  details 
were,  the  public  never  will  know.  But 
Mrs.  Wilson  may  have  said:  "Oh,  yes, 
I  nearly  forgot.  You'll  have  trouble 
with  the  cold  water  faucet  in  the  up 
stairs  washbowl.  It's  been  like  that 
ever  since  the  Fillmores  lived  here." 


10 


Overset 

"Mrs.  Harding  did  not  meet  the  Pres 
ident,  who  had  retired  to  his  study  on 
the  upper  floor  to  read/'  the  account 
says.  And  Mrs.  Wilson  didn't  disturb 
him.  A  jewel  of  a  woman !  Most  wives 
would  have  called  up  "Papa,  come  down 
quick.  Comp'ny.  Mrs.  Harding's  here." 

We  should  like  to  print  the  exact 
words  of  colloquy  between  the  Wilsons 
after  Mrs.  Harding  left,  particularly 
what  Mrs.  Wilson  said  when  the  Presi 
dent  asked,  "Well,  what  is  she  like?" 

THE  Subway  Sun  ironically  suggests 
that  if  the  moon  were  made  of  green 
cheese,  some  folks  would  say  it  was  the 
Interborough's  fault. 

That  we  doubt;  but  we'll  bet  one  sub 
way  ticket  to  a  copy  of  the  Evening 
Telegram  that  if  it  were,  the  Inter- 
borough  would  charge  an  adequate  rate 
for  looking  at  it  through  a  telescope. 

EAGERNESS,  curiosity,  and  credulity 
are  our  chief  characteristics;  but  we 
never  have  been  able  to  read  through  an 


Overset 

article  or  a  book  entitled  "The  True 
Story  of,"  'The  Real  Facts  About,"  or 
'The  Inside  History  of  .  .  ." 

UNTIL  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  writes  poetry 
and  composes  music,  we  shall  go  on  be 
lieving  that  his  versatility  is  an  Over 
praised  Institution.  And  until  Mr. 
George  Ade  writes  the  novel  that  he 
says,  in  the  American  Magazine,  he  was 
about  to  write  eighteen  or  twenty  years 
ago,  we  shall  think  of  him  as  a  golf 
player  who  has  shirked  his  duty  to  the 
public  and  to  himself. 

OUR  idea  of  erudition  is  being  able  to 
say,  "Wells  is  all  wrong  about  this." 

THE  hodiernal  ragtime  songs,  two 
Harvard  boys  say  they  believe,  are  too 
slangy.  They  should  be  deleted,  they 
say,  of  their  vulgarisms.  Nonsense! 
One  trouble  with  the  old  poets  is  that 
they  weren't  slangy  enough.  Words 
worth,  for  instance,  might  have  grown 
wealthy  if  "Lucy"  had  read  like  this: 
12 


Overset 

She's  a  pippin,  she's  a  bearcat,  the  girl  I  love 

And  she  lives — Where?  where? 

By  the  springs  of  Dove. 

She's  a  blue  v-i-o-l-e-t 

By  a  mossy  s-t-o-n-e; 

She's  my  Lucy, 

She's  my  Lucy, 

She's  my  L-u-c-y  Gray! 

OUR  quarrel  to-day  is  with  the  edi 
torial  gentleman  to  our  left  who  could 
imagine,  yesterday,  nothing  of  less  con 
sequence  than  the  religious  development 
of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells.  Almost  any  devel 
opment  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  to  our  no 
tion,  is  of  cosmic  momentousness;  and 
there  is  no  exaggerating  the  importance 
of  the  development  that  made  him  stop 
writing  books  like  'The  History  of  Mr. 
Polly/'  "Kipps,"  and  'The  Wheels  of 
Chance." 

If  Wordsworth  Had  Written  "Lucy" 
for  the  "  Blue  Book  " 

New  York,  N.Y.to  Dove  Junction— 18.1 

0.0  Columbus    Circle    north    on    Broadway  to 

Yonkers. 

14.2  Yonkers,  bear  left   on  untrodden  ways  to 
Dove  Springs. 

13 


Overset 

17 . 8  Straight  thru  to  Dove  Junction,  jog  left. 
18. 1  Dove  Junction  Cemetery,  grave  of  Lucy  Gray 
on  right. 

Tea  and  Souvenir  Postcards 
at  the  Lucy  Gray  Tea  House 

You  may  break,  you  may  shatter,  the 

law  if  you  d'sire, 
But   the   price  of  good  liquor   goes 

higher  'n'  higher. 

OUR  NOTION  of  an  optimist  is  a  man 
who,  knowing  that  each  year  was  worse 
than  the  preceding,  thinks  next  year  will 
be  better. 

And  a  pessimist  is  a  man  who  knows 
the  next  year  can't  be  any  worse  than 
the  last  one. 

THERE  was  a  New  Year's  time  when 
our  resolution  was  made  to  waste  less 
time  during  the  ensuing  year.  But  with 
the  silvering  years  a  trickling  of  wisdom 
has  bubbled;  and  we  know  now,  survey 
ing  the  centuries  we  have  lived,  that  all 
we  have  on  the  credit  side  is  the  memory 
of  wasted  time.  It's  earnest  effort  that 

14 


Overset 

ages  and  corrodes;  not  wasted  time. 
(Being  the  slightly  rueful  and  partially 
insincere  thoughts  of  one  who  has  friv- 
oled  since  Friday  afternoon,  and  found 
himself  last  night  with  no  riper,  more 
epoch-making  thoughts  than  these.) 


INSOMNIAC  though  we  be,  whenever 
we  read  of  somebody  promising  "a  busi 
ness  administration"  we  sink  into  a 
sound  slumber.  If  business  were  run 
like  politics  it  would  collapse.  In  busi 
ness,  when  a  man  fills  his  job  with  con 
spicuous  success  to  the  people  who  put 
him  into  it,  he  holds  the  job  as  long  as 
he  continues  to  fill  it  that  way  .  .  . 
A  Happy  New  Year,  by  the  way,  to 
Arthur  Woods. 

Of  course,  there  would  be  this  about 
it.  If  a  mayor,  for  instance,  should  hold 
office  as  long  as  the  people,  by  a  nine- 
tenths  vote,  were  satisfied  with  him, 
there  would  always  be  that  section  of 
the  press  to  charge  that  he  was  making 
good  purely  for  political  reasons. 

15 


Overset 

IF  WE  knew  anyone  engaged  in  writ 
ing  a  musical  comedy  we  should  sug 
gest  that  in  the  restaurant  scene  the 
woman,  as  women  in  restaurants  do,  take 
out  their  handy  repair  kits  of  paints, 
oils,  and  varnishes,  and  adjust  their 
complexions.  And  that  the  men,  dip 
ping  shaving  brushes  into  the  water 
tumblers,  go  through  the  process  of 
shaving.  All  we  want  for  the  suggestion 
is  40  per  cent,  of  the  royalties  and  60 
per  cent,  of  the  movie  rights. 

"!N  SOMETHING  over  five  decades," 
philosophizes  our  favorite  Marion, 
Ohio,  newspaper,  the  Star,  "we  fail  to 
recall  where  anybody  ever  boosted  his 
own  business  or  that  of  his  community 
by  dwelling  on  business  depression."  In 
something  more  than  five  minutes,  which 
is  a  long  time  to  give  to  any  subject,  we 
fail  to  recall  one  instance  of  anybody 
starting  a  business  boom  by  playing  a 
piccolo  solo  in  a  graveyard. 

Prices  of  most  things  are  lower,  but 
they  are  as  high  as  possible,  as  they  al- 
16 


Overset 

ways  are.  One  of  the  principles  of  busi 
ness  is  to  get  the  highest  possible  price, 
which  is,  in  a  universe  that  has  other 
flaws,  all  right.  The  wrong  thing  is  the 
hypocrisy  of  the  sellers  who  pretend  to 
lower  prices  because  of  altruism. 

IT  is  a  good  idea  to  leave  politics  out 
of  the  traction  problem.  Also  out  of  the 
Department  of  Health,  the  Police  De 
partment,  and  the  Department  of  Street 
Cleaning.  Why  not  out  of  the  world, 
while  we  are  about  it?  A  world  with 
out  politics  would  give  everybody  more 
time  for  whatever  he  wants  to  do.  A 
librettist  who  could  get  a  manager  to 
produce  his  stuff  as  written  might  do 
worse  than  try  the  theme  of  a  Land 
Without  Politics. 

Still,  probably  it  would  be  only  in  a 
land  without  politics  that  such  a  libret 
tist  might  work;  and  then  his  theme 
would  be  trite. 

"I  NEVER  thought  of  taking  a  cocktail 
*7 


Overset 

before  Prohibition/'  confided  Dulcinea, 
"but  now  I  take  one  whenever  I  am 
offered  one.  May  never  get  another 
chance,  you  see." 

IF  MR.  SHAW  or  the  successor  of  Sir 
William  S.  Gilbert  would  like  a  theme, 
there  is  the  riot  at  the  munition  factory 
the  day  universal  disarmament  goes  into 
effect. 

MR.  EDISON  observes  that  if  between 
the  ages  of  twelve  and  sixteen  a  man 
become  "interested  in  a  subject  and 
enthusiastic  he  will  become  a  high  type 
of  man.  If  not  his  mental  machinery 
will  atrophy  gradually  and  he  will  be 
come  a  mental  dead  one."  As  our  once 
profane  President  used  to  say,  "Tut!" 
Between  the  ages  of  twelve  and  sixteen 
a  youth  is  interested  in  athletics,  stamp 
collecting,  some  kind  of  reading,  Bud 
Fisher's  cartoons,  girls,  and  ice-cream 
sodas.  And  such  boys  grow  up  to  be 
presidents,  bankers,  writers,  musicians, 
actors,  and  chauffeurs.  Anything,  in 
18 


Overset 

brief,  but  inventors  who  express  ideas  on 
every  subject;  and  paragraphers  simi 
larly  loquacious. 

"His  criticism/'  the  World  says,  edi 
torially,  of  the  late  James  G.  Huneker, 
"was  not  only  authoritative  but  it  was 
constructive."  It  seems  to  us  that  if 
there  ever  was  a  critic  who  hated  what 
is  generally  known  as  constructive  criti 
cism,  it  was  Huneker. 

The  World  says,  too,  "of  his  profes 
sional  work  as  a  critic  it  could  be  truth 
fully  said  that  he  set  nothing  down  in 
malice."  Huneker  wrote  with  consider 
able  malice;  healthy  malice,  without 
which  criticism  is  largely  junk.  And 
without  which  he  never  would  have 
given  the  great  service  that  made  him  a 
pioneer  of  the  Anti-Bunk  movement. 

"MANY  are  interested  in  spreading 
propaganda,"  our  acuminous  contem 
porary,  B.  L.  T.,  observes,  "but  hardly 
anybody  is  interested  in  checking  it." 
This  office  is.  So  many  propaganda 
19 


Overset 

spreaders  call  here  every  afternoon  and 
evening  that  we  have  a  checkroom  for 
just  that  purpose. 

THE  President  is  going  to  the  theater 
regularly  again,  but,  beyond  our  joy 
that  he  is  well  enough  to  go,  we  have  no 
sensation  about  it.  We  have  watched 
Mr.  Wilson  at  plays  and  at  vaudeville 
shows,  and  no  jest  so  poor  as  not  to  win 
the  reverence  of  his  laugh.  The  Presi 
dent's  dramatic  taste  is,  it  seems  to  us, 
of  a  piece  with  Henry  Ford's  or  Thomas 
A.  Edison's  literary  predilections. 

That  may  be  unfair  to  Mr.  Wilson. 
When  a  man  like  Mr.  Wilson — an  aloof 
man — laughs  in  public,  he  may  do  it 
only  to  show  what  a  thoroughly  human 
fellow  he  is,  as  some  ministers,  when 
they  meet  strangers,  often  overdo  pro 
fanity. 

WHEN  Keats  was  twenty-three  years 

of  age  he  said  he  had  "little  knowledge 

and  middling  intellect."    "It  is  true,"  he 

wrote,  "that  in  the  height  of  enthusiasm 

20 


Overset 

I  have  been  cheated  into  some  fine  pas 
sages"  (and  that,  to  our  notion,  is  one 
of  them);  "but  that  is  not  the  thing." 
Also  he  thought  that  if  he  should  die,  he 
would  leave  no  immortal  work  behind 
him — nothing  to  make  his  friends  proud 
of  his  memory;  "but  if  I  had  time  I 
would  have  made  myself  remembered." 
Probably  time  would  not  have  added 
anything  to  Keats.  We  have  ceased  to 
fool  ourself  about  time,  environment, 
tranquillity,  or  climate.  We  never  used 
to  see  a  large  clean  desk  in  a  quiet  room 
that  we  didn't  think,  "If  I  only  could 
work  under  such  conditions,  I  might  Put 
it  Over."  But  we  know  now  that  there 
is  no  Synthetic  Afflatus. 

Old  Don  Marquis  and  young  Pro 
fessor  Heywood  Broun  have  been  print 
ing  their  animadversions  upon  Age  and 
Achievement.  As  readers  of  this  Eiffel 
of  Emptiness  never  miss  a  line  written 
by  these  broad-visioned  and  -shouldered 
gentlemen,  it  is  unnecessary  to  republish 
what  they  said.  Both,  in  a  word,  thought 
that  some  day,  when  they  were  older, 
21 


Overset 

they  would  do  the  Big  Stuff.  Well,  we 
recorded  our  thoughts  De  Senectute 
years  ago,  when  Marquis  and  Broun 
were  young  and  gracile,  or  ever  Ambi 
tion  had  picked  at  the  counterpane. 

There  is  a  time  (we  think  we  said) 
when  you  say  to  yourself:  'This  isn't 
good,  but  it  isn't  bad  for  a  kid.  At 
thirty  perhaps  I'll  have  something  to 
say,  and  even  if  I  haven't,  I'll  know  how 
to  say  nothing  .supremely  well."  Then 
— many  years  elapsing  while  you  still 
make  excuses  to  yourself,  on  the  ground 
of  youth,  for  your  ineptitude — you  look 
at  the  old  stuff  you  did  long  years  ago, 
and  say:  "Why  can't  I  do  as  well  as 
that  now?"  .  .  .  And  the  truth 
probably  is  that  the  early  stuff  was  bad 
because  it  was  unripe,  and  the  late  stuff 
is  bad  because  you  haven't  anything  to 
say,  and  never  will  have  anything  to 
say.  .  .  .  Ho!  hum!  this  snow  is 
likely  to  make  the  tennis  season  late. 

DOUBT  is  hereby  expressed  as  to 
whether  Mr.  Prince  Freeling,  prosecutor 

22 


Overset 

in  the  Hamon  murder  trial,  was  en 
tirely  right  when  he  said,  "They  had 
lovers'  quarrels,  the  usual  result  of  illicit 
love/'  Are  they?  Or  are  they  one  of 
the  by-products?  And  how  characterize 
the  quarrels — for  this  is  an  imperfect 
world — that  legal  love  is  not  free  from? 
But  there  we  go  again — dipping  into 
subjects  which  ignorance,  as  Mr.  Octavus 
Roy  Cohen's  heroes  might  say,  is  what 
we  have  nothing  but  of. 

AND  now  the  Senate  of  the  climatic 
ally  fairest  state  in  our  geographically 
broad  land  has  passed  the  Lusk-Clayton 
bill  for  motion  picture  censorship.  The 
chances  are  that  a  board  composed  of 
persons  without  taste  will  pass  upon  the 
exhibitability  of  films  not  infrequently 
born  in  the  imagination  of  producers 
also  without  taste. 

"It  will  be  up  to  the  board,  for  in 
stance,"  Senator  Boylan  says,  "to  stand 
ardize  the  screen  kiss.  How  long  should 
it  last?  Should  it  last  a  minute  or  only 
thirty  seconds  to  pass  muster?"  A  kiss, 
23 


Overset 

we  are  informed,  is  a  local  issue;  its 
duration,  our  confiding  informant  adds, 
is  relative:  it  may  be  zero  or  infinity. 

Query  to  censorship  board:  How  long 
should  it  take  to  pass  a  given  point? 

UTTERLY  selfish  is  our  hope  that  the 
movies  continue  to  be  called  a  menace. 
For  the  folks  who  used  to  talk  about  the 
Curse  of  Rum  now  talk  about  the  Men 
ace  of  the  Movies.  And  when  the  censor 
ship  board  takes  the  Sin  out  of  the 
Cinema,  there  will  be  the  newspapers  to 
blame  for  the  woes  of  the  world.  .  .  . 
The  world,  although  some  of  our  best 
friends  are  resident  members  of  it,  re 
minds  us  of  the  hang-over  who  says,  "I 
should  never  have  eaten  those  soft- 
boiled  eggs  last  week." 

As  WE  see  censorship  it  is  a  stupid 
giant  traffic  policeman  answering  "Yes" 
to  "Am  I  my  brother's  copper?"  He 
guards  a  one-way  street  and  his  sema 
phore  has  four  signs,  all  marked 
"STOP." 

24 


Overset 

"To  BE  an  editor  was  one  of  my  ambi 
tions,"  wrote  Andrew  Carnegie  in  his 
autobiography.  "Horace  Greeley  and 
the  Tribune  was  my  ideal  of  human  tri 
umph."  A  lofty  ambition,  too.  What 
we  should  like  to  know  is  what  actually 
deflected  his  bark  from  its  course.  For 
our  picture  of  Mr.  Carnegie  is  a  domi 
nating  man,  who  got  everything  he  had 
any  ambition  to  get. 

"  'Eureka!'  "  I  cried.  "Mr.  Carnegie's 
autobiography  says,  'Here's  the  goose 
that  laid  the  golden  egg/  "  A  free  trans 
lation,  we'll  asseverate. 

THE  recollection  of  most  college  grad 
uates  is  so  hazy  that  they  are  hard  put 
to  it  to  differentiate  between  the  fourth 
dimension  and  the  fourth  declension. 

WAR  may  be  prohibited  some  day,  but 
probably  you'll  always  be  able  to  get  one 
on  a  doctor's  prescription. 

HALF  the  world,  it  appears,  is  engaged 
in  militantly  objecting  to  the  other  half's 

25 


Overset 

bigotry.  "All  we  want/'  says  one  half, 
"is  fair  play."  "But,"  says  theother  half, 
with  justice,  "you  don't  know  fair  play 
when  you  get  it."  And  so  the  planet 
spins. 

WITH  the  plan  to  found  a  Socialist 
College  we  are  in  utter  concord.  We 
shouldn't  mind  accepting  the  chair,  or 
stool,  of  journalism,  for  that  matter. 
But  we  warn  the  faculty  that  as  soon  as 
the  quarrel  about  fraternities  begins,  we 
resign. 

Probably  if  one  man  in  the  Socialist 
College  eleven  did  more  than  the  one- 
eleventh  of  the  playing,  the  team'd  dis 
band. 

THE  ART  OF  FASCINATING 

"WHICH  of  these  two  men,"  the  adver 
tisement  demands,  "has  learned  the 
secret  of  fifteen  minutes  a  day?"  The 
advertisement  is  P.  F.  Collier  &  Son 
Company's. 

Gaze  on  the  picture.  A  beautiful 
26 


Overset 

young  woman  is  seated,  between  two 
men,  at  a  table.  Coffee  has  been  served; 
and,  though  nobody  is  smoking,  indica 
tions  are  that  a  pleasant  time  is  being 
had.  But,  soft!  Not  by  all.  Beaming 
upon  the  young  man  to  her  right  with  a 
warm  approval  that  another  spark  would 
make  into  candescent  admiration  and 
worship,  the  young  woman,  her  lips 
slightly  parted,  sits;  the  young  man  at 
her  right  obviously  is  talking  to  her;  the 
young  man  at  her  left,  with  what  we 
take  to  be  an  envious  look,  observes  his 
rival.  He  appears  to  be  biting  his  nails, 
registering  jealousy.  He  looks  not  un 
like  the  old  pictures  we  used  to  see  in 
the  patent  medicine  advertisement  la 
beled  we  believe,  General  Debility.  So 
much  for  the  picture. 

"Here,"  continues  the  advertisement, 
"are  two  men,  equally  good  looking, 
equally  well  dressed.  You  see  such  men 
at  every  social  gathering.  One  of  them 
can  talk  of  nothing  beyond  the  mere 
day's  news.  The  other  brings  to  every 
subject  a  wealth  of  side-light  and  illus- 
27 


Overset 

tration  that  makes  him  listened  to 
eagerly.  He  talks  like  a  man  who  has 
traveled  widely,  though  his  only  travels 
are  a  business  man's  trips.  He  knows 
something  of  history  and  biography,  of 
the  work  of  great  scientists,  and  the 
writings  of  philosophers,  poets,  and 
dramatists." 

"The  answer,"  the  advertisement  goes 
on — but  you  know  what  it  says.  You 
know  that  it  says  you  may  have  this 
man's  Success  for  the  asking;  that  if 
you  became  a  bookworm  that  burrowed 
fifteen  whole  minutes  a  day  in  your 
books — the  Five-Foot  Shelf,  to  be  pre 
cise — Beauty  would  beam  upon  you,  too; 
you,  too,  would  be  a  Masterful  Man,  a 
Conquering  Hero. 

Remote  be  it  from  us  to  throw  doubt 
upon  the  effect  of  an  advertisement. 
Why,  some  of  our  best  friends  are  adver 
tisers,  and  we  wouldn't  offend  one  of 
them  for  the  solar  system  with  Betelguese 
thrown  in.  But  candor  compels  the  ad 
mission  that  our  answer  to  the  ques 
tion  quoted  in  the  first  sentence  of  this 
28 


Overset 

piece  was  wrong.  In  a  word,  we  thought 
the  discomfited  looking  man  was  the 
bookworm.  To  us  he  looked  as  though 
he  were  thinking,  "How  is  it  possible  for 
that  girl  to  listen  to  that  incessant,  ego 
tistic  piffle?  She  appears  interested. 
Is  she?  I've  seen  'em  pretend  to  be  fas 
cinated  by  what  men  were  saying,  when 
all  the  time  their  little  brains — if  any — 
were  thinking  of  something  else.  I  wish 
I  could  get  away  and  get  back  to  my 
Five-Foot  Shelf.  This  is  a  sad  evening. 
Won't  he  ever  stop?" 

What  the  advertisement  wants  you  to 
think  he  is  saying  is,  "A  murrain  on  his 
fatal  gift  of  fascination!  Him  with  his 
fine  words  and  his  book  learning!  I 
wish  I  had  not  squandered  my  time. 
How  lightly,  yet  how  confidently,  he 
mentions  Cavour,  Columbus,  Darwin, 
Epictetus,  Emerson,  Euripides!  And 
next  week,  curse  his  acquisitiveness,  he 
will  have  read  up  to  F,  perhaps  G!" 

And  also,  according  to  the  advertise 
ment,  the  Cultured  (self)  young  man  is 
speaking  of  just  such  things;  and 
29 


Overset 

Beauty,  enraptured,  marvels  that  one 
head,  handsome  though  it  be,  can  hold 
all  that  knowledge. 

But  our  interpretation  of  the  picture 
is  this:  It  looks  to  us,  as  has  been  said, 
as  if  the  disgruntled  young  man  were  the 
tome-hound.  And,  despairing  of  lead 
ing  the  talk  to  matters  of  history  and 
biography,  etc.,  he  is  listening  to  the 
handsome  young  man  say  to  the  Fairest 
of  Her  Sex,  "And  I  said  to  him,  'Say, 
Mr.  Swope,  wh@  do  you  think  you're 
talkin'  to?'  And  I  took  my  hat  and 
walked  out  and  left  him  flat.  I'm  as 
good  as  he  is.  ...  Say,  what  say  to 
going  over  to  Montmartre  or  the  Palais 
Royal  and  having  a  couple  of  dances  or 
six?" 

"I'd  love  to,"  says  Beauty,  "if  Mr. — 
now — Gazish  will  excuse  us." 

"Oh,"  the  bookworm — according  to 
our  interpretation,  not  to  Collier's — 
would  say,  "Certainly.  Sure.  That's 
all  right.  I  ought  to  be  going  home  any 
way." 

That's  what  would  have   happened. 
30 


Overset 

We  know.    As  Frank  Bacon  might  say, 
we  were  a  bookworm  ourself  once. 

THERE  are  those  to  whom  it  is  im 
possible  to  tell  news.  They  knew  it  all 
the  time.  And  there  are  those  who  al 
ways  have  the  Inside  Stuff.  In  the 
second  class  is  a  wearisome  acquaint 
ance,  who,  on  being  told  that  Betel- 
guese  was  27,000,000  times  as  large  as 
the  sun,  said,  "I  heard  different." 

"WELL,"  said  the  office  cynic,  as  he 
read  that  Mrs.  Bourasse  had  received  a 
present  of  a  $26  bottle  of  perfume  from 
Mr.  Swarts  and  that  she,  in  return,  had 
bought  him  a  pair  of  gold  cuff  links  for 
$10,  "she  had  a  fairer  sense  of  exchange 
than  most  of  'em." 

WELL,  we  have  seen  the  Edison  ques 
tionnaire  and  to  us  it  seems  a  fair  test. 
It  is  possible  that  a  man  who  could 
answer  not  a  single  question  would  be 
a  genius;  and  it  is  possible  that  a  man 
who  could  answer  every  question  cor- 


Overset 

rectly  would  be  a  futile  person.     But 
neither  of  those  things  is  likely. 

As  senility  approaches,  the  infallibil 
ity  of  tests  impresses  us  less.  The 
only  infallible  tests  are  these:  We've 
never  let  a  child  of  ours  marry  a  person 
who  encloses  a  pint  envelope  for  the 
return  of  a  gallon  manuscript;  and  we've 
never  known  a  man  that  wore  buttoned 
half  shoes  who  amounted  to  a  whoop 
in  Gehenna. 

WIDE  as  our  reading  of  all  the  box 
fighting  news  is,  we  have  failed  to  see 
Mr.  Dempsey's  quoted  opinions  on  Mr. 
Edison's  questionnaire.  We  can  imag 
ine  nothing  of  less  consequence  than 
Mr.  Dempsey's  opinions  on  any  non- 
arena  subjects;  which  is  why  we  con 
fess  to  astonishment  at  not  seeing  what 
he  thinks  about  the  Edison  questions. 

"Yes/'  is  our  reply  to  an  advertise 
ment  we  read  over  a  man's  shoulder  in 
the  Subway  last  night — "Are  you  afraid 
of  your  banker?"    Also  of  the  assistant 
32 


Overset 

receiving  teller,  the  bank  policeman,  and 
the  assistant  paying  teller. 

Once,  summoning  all  our  assurance, 
we  asked  the  paying  teller  to  let  us  have 
the  money  in  clean  fives  or  tens.  "Are 
you  willing  to  take  these?"  he  asked, 
counting  out  soiled  bills.  "Yes,"  was 
our  reply;  and,  although  we  give  the 
bank,  unhesitatingly,  all  our  money,  we 
never  shall  ask  another  favor  of  them. 

MANY  a  novel  has  sprung  full-armed 
from  an  author's  brain-waves  with 
less  than  the  following  personal,  from 
the  Butte  Miner:  "Will  the  gentleman 
who  picked  up  a  lady  who  fell  Tuesday 
morning  on  E.  Granite  St.  by  Hennessy's 
store  please  call  at  17  E.  Summit  St.?" 

BROWN  UNIVERSITY  and  the  Univer 
sity  of  Oregon  are  among  i/s  of  1.  that 
have  banned,  as  the  headline  writers  say, 
jazz  dancing.  But  the  headline,  as  any 
young  S.  of  J.  student  knows,  should 
have  been  "Cheek  to  Cheek  Banned 
from  Coast  to  Coast." 

33 


Overset 

CUSTOMARY  diluted  custard  is  dis 
pensed  by  the  managers  of  both  fighters 
to  the  effect  that  each  hopes,  for  the  sake 
of  the  sport,  the  other  will  be  in  the  best 
of  condition  and  put  up  a  good  fight. 
In  a  fight  like  this  each  probably  hopes 
the  other  will  sprain  his  entire  system 
early  in  the  first  round. 

THERE  are  150,710,620  of  us  in  the 
United  States,  which  must  cheer  the 
hearts  of  the  manufacturers  of  automo 
bile  pennants. 

WAGES,  Labor  says,  have  been  re 
duced  proportionally  more  than  the 
wage-earner's  living  cost;  and  in  the 
days  of  enormous  wages,  living  costs 
were  advanced  proportionally  more.  It 
costs  more  to  live  than  it  should  cost;  it 
always  has  cost  more  than  it  should 
cost;  and,  while  we  never  were  one  to 
take  the  sadness  out  of  life,  it  has  al 
ways  appeared  as  it  now  appears,  de 
spite  to-day's  prediction  of  Cloudy  with 
Showers,  worth  it. 

34 


Overset 

ONE  who  lives  adjacent  to  a  Philadel 
phia  school  tells  us  that  the  children 
sing  songs  like  'The  Love  Nest"  in  the 
classroom,  which  recalls  the  first  song 
we  were  forced — by  Miss  Werkmeister, 
Room  22,  Douglas  School — to  sing.  It 
was  something  like: 

In  all  the  green  world  there  is  none  so  sweet 
As  my  little  lamb  with  its  nimble  feet; 
His  eyes  are  so  bright,  his  wool  so  white; 
O,  he  is  my  darling,  my  heart's  delight! 

But  our  favorite  that  year  was: 

Where  do  all  the  daisies  go? 

/  know,  /  know. 
Underneath  the  snow  they  creep; 

Nod  their  little  heads  and  sleep; 
In  the  Springtime  out  they  peep — 

That  is  where  they  go. 
In  the  Springtime  out  they  peep — 

That  is  where  they  go. 

What  worried  us  the  first  day  of  school 
was  how  everybody  but  us  in  the  room 
appeared  to  know  the  words  and  music 
of  these  songs.  Was  the  world,  we 
thought,  frightened  to  dizziness,  like 
that?  Was  everybody  to  know  more 

35 


Overset 

than  we?  And  that,  Dr.  Freud,  is  a 
fear  we  never  have  been  able  to  over 
whelm.  .  .  .  The  other  children, 
we  learned  later,  knew  these  songs  be 
cause  their  older  brothers  and  sisters  had 
sung  them. 

And  yet  it  wasn't  long  after  that  first 
day  that  a  youth  named  Hosmer  Dor- 
land  and  we  were  kept  in  after  school  for 
having  sung  too  loud. 

NOT  one  to  sacrifice  truth,  or  a  friend, 
just  to  mint  a  phrase  or  epigram,  is 
President  Harding.  After  seeing  Tilden 
and  Williams  play  a  set  on  the  White 
House  Court,  "I  enjoyed  the  very  high- 
class  tennis  very  much,"  he  said. 

"Although,"  Rodney  Bean  writes  in 
the  Times,  "he  is  a  man  of  less  vigorous 
physique  than  Colonel  Roosevelt,  Mr. 
Harding  plays  a  fast  game."  We  doubt 
it,  and  we  doubt  whether  Mr.  Harding 
even  thinks  he  plays  a  fast  game.  Un 
less,  as  is  possible,  it  doesn't  take  long 
to  finish  a  set  in  which  he  is  one  of  the 
players. 

36 


Overset 

PROBABLY,  after  all,  the  sale  of  Run- 
nymede  will  not  be  accomplished.  Run- 
nymede,  as  Mr.  Henry  Ford  may  recall, 
is  the  field  whereon  Elizabeth  Queen  of 
Scots  pawned  her  jewels  in  order  that 
Copernicus  might  discover  the  law  of 
gravitation. 

WHAT  sort  of  place  would  the  world 
be — and  there,  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  is  a 
subject  fit  to  your  hand — if  writers  of 
every  kind  should  disarm,  for,  say,  ten 
years?  All  publications  to  discontinue; 
all  writers  to  throw  away  pencils,  pens, 
and  typewriters. 

Of  course  it  is  interesting — for  about 
a  minute,  which  is  as  long  as  most  of 
us  can  endure  sustained  thinking — to 
speculate  as  to  what  the  world  would 
be  like  under  those  conditions;  but  what 
interests  us  even  more  is  an  answer  to 
What  Sort  of  Place  Is  It  Now? 

As  DE  VALERA  says,  the  road  to  peace 
and  understanding  lies  open.  But  it  is 
a  road  so  infrequently  traveled  that 

37 


Overset 

hopeful  tourists,  when  they  see  it,  un 
consciously  detour. 

Rather — though  once  on  the  road,  the 
traveler  wonders  how  he  ever  endured 
any  other — it  seems  as  though  the  en 
trance  to  the  road  bore  the  sign  "Use 
This  Road  At  Your  Own  Peril." 


WE  HAVE  read  all  the  things  written, 
all  of  them  in  kindness,  about  the  Len- 
glen  default.  It  seems  to  us  that  she 
deserves  little  kindness.  Her  default 
was  not  even  graceful;  and,  speaking  as 
one  whose  trachea  and  larynx  have  been 
affected  to  such  an  extent  that  a  tennis 
ball  scarcely  was  visible,  we  know  that 
no  throat  irritation  makes  it  impossi 
ble  to  shake  hands.  Mile.  Lenglen 
flubbed  her  chance  to  go  down  to  a  le 
gitimate  defeat  that  would  have  en 
deared  her  to  the  gallery  and  to  the  rest 
of  the  country,  a  defeat  that  would  have 
made  friends  for  the  France  she  pro 
fesses  so  to  love. 

But  she  did  flub  the  chance.     And  we 

38 


Overset 

doubt  whether  all  the  king's  automobiles 
and  all  the  king's  chauffeurs  can  ever 
put  together  the  shattered — by  her — 
pieces  of  American  admiration  that  were 
hers  before  Tuesday's  match.  That  she 
lost  is  not  sad;  but  it  is  sad  that  so  great 
a  player  should  be  unable  to  lose. 

What  the  crowd  at  Forest  Hills  felt 
when  the  Lenglen  default  came  was  ex 
pressed  by  a  woman  sitting  near  us. 
"Well,"  she  said,  "that  won't  do  much 
to  undevastate  France/' 

FREQUENTLY  it  is  pointed  out  to  a 
colyumist  that  he  must,  of  necessity,  en 
joy  a  vacation  less  than  others,  because 
the  discrepancy  between  his  work  and  no 
work  at  all  is  less  marked — is,  in  fact, 
so  slight  as  to  be  indiscernible.  The 
truth  of  which  cannot  be  successfully 
denied. 

Wherever  the  holidaying  colyumist 
goes  he  is  assured  that  there  is  enough 
material  in  that  town  to  keep  him  going 
for  a  year.  And  that  he  ought  to  meet 
Jim  Gazookus,  who  says  one  comical 

39 


Overset 

thing  after  another.  Concerning  the 
town,  it  is  true;  there  is  enough  stuff  in 
any  town  to  keep  a  commentator  going 
for  life.  As  to  the  loquacious  and 
vaunted  merry-andrew,  there  isn't  a 
printable  wheeze  in  a  barrel  of  him. 

Besides,  thrift  is  not  one  of  our  colum 
nar  habits.  In  a  month  of  errantry,  all 
we  recall  is  that  H.  W.  Lobb,  who  owns 
a  hotel  in  Germantown,  Pa.,  ought  to 
enter  a  doubles  tournament  paired  with 
Robert  W.  Service. 

YESTERDAY'S  American  carried  an  es 
say  on  comedy,  whose  last  paragraph 
read:  "And  the  fun-makers  have  their 
place  in  the  world."  Like  most  essays 
on  this  theme,  it  is  patronizing  and  con 
descending.  It  seems  to  us  that  the 
writers  of  these  essays  are  saying  to 
themselves,  "If  I  didn't  have  more  im 
portant  stuff  to  do,  I'd  take  an  afternoon 
off  and  write  a  lot  of  funny  stuff  myself/' 
Now,  the  essayist  can't  get  any  informa 
tion  about  the  subject,  because  he  is  re 
sistant  and  unyielding;  and  when  he  in- 
40 


Overset 

terviews  somebody  who  has  a  reputation 
for  spoken  or  written  comedy,  he  doesn't 
quite  trust  him.  "Good  morning/'  says 
the  interviewer.  "Good  morning/'  says 
the  comedian.  "That  isn't  so  funny,"  the 
interviewer  thinks  to  himself,  "but  there 
is  probably  some  hidden  meaning 
there,  or  a  slap  at  me,  or  at  somebody 
else.  I  wonder  what  he  really  meant  by 
'Good  morning/  I  must  be  careful 
what  I  say  to  this  man." 

Autobiographical  stuff,  you  say.  In 
a  measure.  Slight  as  our  reputation  is, 
and  founded  as  it  is  on  the  sandy  soil  of 
contributions,  whenever  we  say  "Yes" 
to  the  query  "Busy?"  it  precipitates  a 
storm  of  merriment  that  our  elaborate 
and  spontaneous  jests  do  not  unleash. 

As  to  the  fun-makers  having  their 
place  in  the  world,  we  are  old  and  gray 
and  full  of  sleep,  and  we  are  leaning  to 
the  opinion  that  nobody  but  the  fun- 
makers  has  any  place  in  the  world. 

Which,  we  hasten  to  add,  is  at  once  a 
more  tolerant  and  a  more  superior  atti 
tude  than  it  seems.  We  cannot  speak 


Overset 

for  other  planets,  but  the  resident  mem 
bers  of  the  human  race  haven't  done 
much  in  their  brief  history  to  take  them 
out  of  the  fun-loving  class. 


HAT/'  conceded  Dr.  Frank  Crane, 
quoted  in  the  publisher's  advertisements 
of  "If  Winter  Comes,"  "is  off  to  writer 
Hutchinson."  Perhaps  it  is  as  well  that 
the  date  of  this  handsome  utterance  is 
not  known.  There  are  enough  legal  holi 
days  as  it  is. 

THERE  is  to  be  a  course  in  hotel- 
keeping,  if  Albany  adopts  a  measure 
conceived  by  some  hotel  men,  at  Cor 
nell  University.  Probably  some  things 
can  be  taught,  but  whether  anybody  can 
teach  a  hotel  mail  clerk  to  look  the 
other  way  when  you  ask  for  mail;  or 
teach  a  room  clerk  how  to  size  up  the 
person  who  asks  for  a  $4  room,  so  as  to 
know  whether  to  let  him  have  it  for 
that  or  to  charge  him  $6.50  —  those  gifts 
are  innate. 

Of  course,  some  hotels  have  the  room 
42 


Overset 

price  placarded  on  the  door — a  fine  prac 
tice — and  others  have  a  one-price-to-all 
rate.  But  ever  so  many  persons  feel 
that  when  the  clerk  says,  "Something 
about  $7?"  and  they  say  "No,"  he  gives 
'em  the  same  room  for  $5. 

"MEN/'  says  Mr.  W.  L.  George, 
"never  ask  women  to  talk  about  them 
selves."  Which,  if  true,  shows  a  high 
degree  of  efficiency. 

But  it  isn't  true.  They  do  ask  wo 
men  to  talk  about  themselves.  And 
women  ask  men  to  talk  about  them 
selves.  Many  an  entangling  alliance 
has  been  formed  with  nothing  to  begin 
with  but  "Now  tell  me  about  yourself." 

Women,  our  observation  has  been,  lis 
ten  more  sedulously  to  men's  recitals  of 
self  than  men  do  to  women's.  Possibly 
that  is  so  because  women — by  training, 
necessity,  or  general  love  of  approbation 
— are  Pleasers.  .  .  .  We  often  won 
der  how  many  million  women  a  day  lis 
ten,  or  pretend  to  listen,  to  epics  whose 
burden  is,  "And  I  says  to  the  boss/Looka 

43 


Overset 

here,  who  do  you  think  you're  talkin' 
to?'" 

WHEN  Mr.  Will  Hays  becomes  head 
of  the  film  producers,  he  will  be  en 
dowed,  we  hope,  with  tyrannical  powers. 
In  which  event  he  should  make  it  a  mis 
demeanor  for  a  scenarist  to  use  the  in 
verted  predicate  in  simple  declarative 
sentences.  "Comes  to  this  peaceful  val 
ley  a  human  jackal"  we  can  endure,  but 
the  other  night  at  "Orphans  of  the 
Storm,"  when  the  words  appeared  "Pass 
the  little  years,"  all  we  could  whisper 
was  "Pass  the  prussic  acid." 


SPEAKING,  as  we  recently  were,  of  ad 
vertising  ideas  we  never  were  able  to 
sell,  years  ago,  fascinated  by  "Barking 
Dog  Tobacco — It  Never  Bites,"  we  of 
fered  slogans  to  other  concerns,  without 
success.  Most  of  them  we  cannot  re 
call,  but  there  were : 

Just-Bef ore-Dawn  Shoe  Polish — It's  Darkest. 
Burnt-Child-Gasoline — It  Dreads  the  Fire. 

44 


Overset 

Time-and-Tide    Elevators — They   Wait   for 

No  Man. 
Douglas  Steaks — Tender  and  True. 

Advertising  slogans  continue  to  hold 
our  errant  fancy.  Why  not  head  the 
column  of  obituaries,  frexamp,  "Read 
'Em  and  Weep"?  And  why  not  the 
Kubla  Khan  Honey  Dew  Melon?  Or 
— for  a  dairy — The  Buttermilk  of  Para 
dise? 

Years  ago,  when  the  suffrage  fight  was 
on,  this  department  suggested  "Votes 
for  Mennen's!"  but  nobody  liked  it. 
Nor — for  an  o.  f.  razor — "Ask  the  man 
who  hones  one." 

WELL,  here's  another  of  our  incompar 
able  ideas  for  advertisers.  Picture: 
Young  woman  gazing  enraptured  at 
young  man's  alabaster  buckskin  shoes. 
"What  makes  them  look  so  white,  so 

white?"      "A  touch  of " 

(This  space  for  sale) 

IT  is  a  malicious  pleasure  to  think, 
riding  up  in  the  cool  Subway,  of  the 

45 


Overset 

motorists  driving  home  through  traffic 
jams;  and  it  is  a  malicious  pleasure  to 
muse,  driving  home  through  the  fresh 
air,  of  the  thousands  standing  up  in  the 
hot  and  sticky  Subway. 


THERE  are,  according  to  recently  pub 
lished  figures,  10,000,000  feeble-minded 
persons  in  the  United  States.  And  there 
isn't  a  magazine  or  newspaper  circula 
tion  manager  in  the  country  that  doesn't 
get  a  secret  thrill  out  of  that  statistic. 

IT  STRIKES  us  that  the  society  news, 
dull — to  us,  at  any  rate — in  the  winter, 
is  even  less  readable  in  summer  and 
that  it  might  be  enlivened  by  rewriting, 
in  verse,  some  of  the  society  paragraphs. 
Yesterday's  news,  frexamp,  might  have 
been  jollier  reading  with: 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Henry  Meek — 

Sleepy  Hollow  Country  Club  all  the  week. 

Miss  Elizabeth  Hobbs  is  spending  July 
Up  at  Cooperstown,  N.  Y. 


Overset 

Among  those  leaving  for  Lake  Bomoseen 
Are  Mrs.  Sally  Farnham  and  Miss  Neysa 
McMein. 

Returned  from  Paris,  Mrs.  Lydig  Hoyt, 
Who  says  that  Paris  Has  Quit  Short  Skoit. 


AN  UNUSUALLY  candid  acquaintance 
of  ours  adds  ten  per  cent,  to  his  alimony 
payments,  as,  he  says,  luxury  tax. 

WHETHER  the  President  had  a  good 
time  on  his  recent  outing  with  Mr.  Ford 
and  Mr.  Firestone  and  Mr.  Edison  we 
never  shall  know;  our  guess  is  that  he 
didn't.  As  we  picture  his  return  Sun 
day  night,  he  dashed  up  to  Mrs.  Hard 
ing  with,  "Well,  mamma,  it  wasn't  any 
fun.  I  wish  I'd  stayed  home  with  you." 

.  .  .  HE  SEEMED  to  feel  that,  like 
the  Caucasian  in  the  jingle,  the  native 
American  stock  was  "played  out." — The 
Freeman. 

That  jingle  of  Bret  Harte's  was  written 
in  the  sonorous  and  dignified  meter  of 
Swinburne's  "Atalanta  in  Calydon." 

47 


Overset 

What  does  the  Freeman  ask  of  a  poet 
to  graduate  him  from  the  jingle  school? 

Calling  anything  that  isn't  a  ponder 
ous  piece  of  prosody  a  jingle  is  as  typical 
of  the  reviewer's  attitude  as  it  is  reve 
latory.  Humorous  verse,  light  verse, 
must  be  referred  to  as  jingles,  or  "amus 
ing  of  its  kind,"  or  "good  of  its  sort." 

What  this  sort  of  critic  says  to  him 
self  when  he  consciously — or  otherwise 
— patronizes  humorous  writing  is,  "Any 
body,  including,  of  course,  myself,  who 
wanted  to  take  a  few  seconds  off  some 
afternoon  could  write  light  and  humor 
ous  stuff." 

ALTHOUGH  we  may  be  first,  we  should 
be  last  to  suggest  that  Colonel  George 
Harvey  is  doing  his  best  for  the  cable 
companies.  "I  came  to  the  Court  of  St. 
James's,"  said  he  in  part,  "utterly  desti 
tute  of  the  traditional  weapons  of  diplo 
macy,  but  poorly  equipped  with  the  same 
candor,  frankness,  straightforwardness, 
sincerity,  and  consideration  which  have 
characterized,"  etc.  Plain  "candor" 
48 


Overset 

would  have  saved  the  A.   P.  a  pretty 
penny  on  the  cable  tolls. 

"LONDON  and  Paris  have  for  several 
years  wanted  me  to  transfer  my  mid 
night  type  of  entertainment  there,  but  I 
have  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  all  their  pleas, 
hoping  that  in  the  end  the  good  Ameri 
can  common  sense  of  our  forefathers 
would  predominate,  but  the  last  few 
weeks  have  convinced  me  that  personal 
liberty  is  as  extinct  as  a  dodo." 

Thus  Mr.  Florenz  Ziegfeld,  Jr.  Al 
though  Mr.  Ziegfeld's  father  was  born 
in  Oldenburg,  Germany,  we  know,  we 
think,  what  he  means  by  "our  fore 
fathers."  And  he  is  right.  If  the  Zieg 
feld  of  his  day  had  put  on  the  "Follies 
of  1620"  at  Plymouth,  the  rockbound 
coast  wouldn't  have  been  nearly  so 
stern. 

IT  is  prophesied  that  in  his  speech 
here  to-night  President  Harding  is  go 
ing  to  tell  the  retailers  that  prices  must 
drop.  The  thing  to  do  to-morrow, 

49 


Overset 

therefore,  is  to  trade  with  only  those  re 
tailers  who,  fearful  of  presidential  dis 
approval,  will  at  once  take  his  advice. 

"PERSONALLY/'  adds  Viscount  North- 
cliffe,  "I  think  Chick  is  writing  too 
much/'  Anybody  who  uses  "person 
ally"  is  writing  one  word  too  much. 

IN  THE  season's  prize  non  sequitur  the 
Red  Book  in  its  advertisement  says: 
"The  praise  of  Dr.  Frank  Crane  is  praise 
indeed,  for  there  is  no  more  distin 
guished  or  widely  read  ethical  guide  and 
counselor  in  the  world  than  he." 

NONE  is  so  gullible  as  he  who  believes 
the  stories  about  the  fight  being  fixed, 
except  him  who  knows  that  nothing  is 
fuller  of  integrity  than  the  fight  game. 

OUR  notion  of  a  careful  investigator  is 
a  man  who  verifies  the  declaration, 
printed  after  the  name  of  a  notary  pub 
lic,  "My  commission  expires  March  30, 
1923." 

50 


Overset 

Plot  for  novel:  Such  an  investigator 
discovers,  after  years  of  verification,  a 
notary  public  who  has  lied.  He  con 
fronts  him  with  his  crime.  Quelque  de 
nouement,  as  Moliere  used  to  say  to  Al 
Woods. 

"!F  WE  were  only  dependent  upon  our 
selves  for  happiness,"  asserts  Walter 
Trumbull  in  the  homaged  Herald,  "this 
would  be  a  gay  old  world."  We  hear 
different.  Our  happiness  expert  tells  us 
that  if  we  were  dependent  upon  only  our 
selves  for  happiness,  it  would  be  an  un 
bearable  world.  It  is,  the  expert  adds, 
being  dependent  upon  others  for  happi 
ness  that  makes  it  an  endurable  world, 
which  is  the  best  you  can  expect  of  any 
planet  we  ever  established  a  voting  resi 
dence  in. 

OUR  statistician  has  computed  that  of 
18,417  men  who  wear  buttoned  half- 
shoes,  18,417,  when  talking  to  persons 
two  feet  from  them,  can  be  heard  by  per 
sons  within  a  radius  of  210  feet. 


Overset 

OURS  is  a  sincere  doubt  as  to  whether 
the  question  "And  what  did  you  do  dur 
ing  the  Great  War?"  might  not  embar 
rass,  among  others,  God. 

ECONOMIC  evolution  will  be  a  failure, 
Controller  Crissinger  says,  unless  all  the 
people  put  their  conscience  into  their 
business  and  their  work.  Then  it  will 
be  a  failure.  Few  are  the  people  who 
are  able  or  willing  to  put  their  con 
science  (if  any)  into  their  business  or 
their  work.  When  a  man  is  conscien 
tious  about  his  business  or  his  work  and 
material  reward  is  not  evident,  he,  un 
less  he  is  unusual,  asks  himself  why  he 
should  do  more  work  than  he  gets  paid 
for.  What  keeps  a  lot  of  people  from 
accomplishment  is  the  widespread  and 
human  fear  of  being  called  a  Soft  Mark. 
And  yet,  though  it  may  be  hard  to 
prove,  we  are  willing  to  bet  that  more 
first-class  achievement  has  been  at 
tained  by  the  Soft  Marks  than  by  the 
Dominant  Magnetics. 

Nor  can  we  trek  along  with  Governor 

52 


Overset 

Allen  when  he  speaks  of  "the  un-Ameri 
can  principle  of  putting  as  little  as  possi 
ble  into  life  and  taking  as  much  as  possi 
ble  out  of  life."  That  principle,  our  opin 
ion  is,  is  as  American  as  it  is  un- 
American.  To  put  nothing  into  life  and 
get  something  out  of  life  is  considered  a 
shrewd  trade.  But  it  is  not  possible;  it 
contradicts  the  law  of  spiritual  econom 
ics  or  physics  that  you  can't  get  more 
out  of  life — or  a  job — than  you  put  into 
it. 

IT  HAS  been  found  unconstitutional  to 
forbid  meetings  such  as  were  held  in 
Mount  Vernon  the  other  night.  Cer 
tainly  there  should  be  no  limit  on  speech- 
making  but  the  orator's  ability  and 
power  to  interest,  arouse,  or  amuse  his 
audience.  If  all  orators  unable  to  inter 
est,  arouse,  or  amuse  were  jailed,  the 
housing  problem  might  be  solved. 

IN  THE  old  days  when  we  were  trying 
to  convince  the  prospective  policy-holder 
of  the  benefits  of  the  tontine  system,  it 

53 


Overset 

was  a  current  bromidiom  that  a  man 
who  couldn't  do  anything  else  solicited 
life  insurance.  Now,  apparently,  he  be 
comes  an  anthologist. 

THERE  are  five  places  in  town  where 
copies  of  the  complete  text  of  the  League 
of  Nations  Covenant  may  be  obtained. 
Most  of  us  will  go  to  the  polls  thinking 
that  if  there  had  been  six  places  we'd 
surely  have  got  a  copy. 

"NOTHING  surpasses  the  possibilities 
for  service,"  Mr.  Harding  telegraphed 
the  new  Joseph  Medill  School  of  Journ 
alism,  "that  are  vested  in  a  great  journal 
commanding  the  public  confidence. 
That  confidence  is  won  through  a  soul 
in  one's  work  and  a  good  conscience  in 
every  utterance  .  .  .  The  greatest 
achievement,  an  achievement  entirely 
away  from  all  personal  ends,  is  to  pro 
mote  the  public  good."  In  these  ideals 
of  journalism  we  agree  with  Mr.  Hard 
ing,  but  if  we  were  on  the  staff  of  the 
Marion  Star,  we  shouldn't  allow  adver- 

54 


Overset 

tisements  of  Cardui,  Dreco,  Aspironal, 
and  other  patent  medicines  without  put 
ting  up  a  frantic  struggle. 

"We  HAVE  never  seen  the  Dayton 
News  or  the  Marion  Star,"  confesses  Jay 
E.  House  in  the  Philadelphia  Public 
Ledger.  "We  should  esteem  it  a  favor 
if  some  friend  would  send  us  a  copy  of 
one  or  both.  We  are  curious  as  to  the 
kind  the  people  of  central  Ohio  are  tak 
ing  nowadays/'  Well,  if  they  are  taking 
what  is  advertised  in  Gov.  Cox's  Dayton 
News  of  last  Wednesday,  they  are  taking 
Bro-Feren,  Excelento  (for  kinky  hair), 
Arvon,  Phelactine,  Laxa-Pirin,  Leon 
ard's  Ear  Oil,  Aspironal  ("Better  than 
whisky  for  Colds  and  Flu"),  Tona-Vin, 
Tonsiline,  Beecham's  Pills,  Foley  Kid 
ney  Pills,  Mayr's  Remedy,  Vinol,  Dreco, 
Vola-Sol,  Mi-O-Na,  Sorbol  Quadruple, 
Hyomel,  Chase's  Blood  and  Nerve  Tab 
lets,  Eckman's  Alterative,  Acco,  Vita- 
mon,  Var-ne-sis,  Lydia  E.  Pinkham's 
Vegetable  Compound,  and  Stuart's  Dys 
pepsia  Tablets.  If  they  are  taking  what 

55 


Overset 

is  advertised  in  Senator  Harding's  Mar 
ion  Star  on  Tuesday,  they  are  taking 
Dreco,  Mayr's  Remedy,  Lightning  Hot 
Drops,  Hypo-Cod,  D.  D.  D.  Bear  Oil, 
Trusler's  Rheumatic  Tablets,  Haelanol, 
Hyomel,  Mi-O-Na,  Vitamon,  and  Men- 
tho  Sulphur. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  decide  which 
of  the  two  candidates — whose  chief  con 
cern  appears  to  be  the  health  of  the  pub 
lic — to  vote  for. 

Saying  It  With  Flowers 

I  AM  not  of  the  patronizing  sort  that 
doesn't  read — or  affects  not  to  read — the 
boxing  news,  the  Gossip  of  Filmland, 
the  Frank  Crane  stuff,  the  syndicated 
"How  to  Keep  Well"  articles.  I  read 
them  all  and  they  do  me  good,  for  I  take 
them  seriously.  In  fact,  I  owe  my  clean 
limbed  young  Americanism  chiefly  to 
my  adherence  to  advice  that  I  read  a 
few  years  ago  in  'The  Life  of  Jess  Wil- 
lard."  Mr.  Willard  advised  me — I  al^ 
ways  think  the  author  is  looking  straight 
at  me — to  do  certain  exercises  daily,  and 
56 


Overset 

every  day  since  the  morning  I  read  that 
counsel  I  have  done  those  strengthening 
exercises.  Somebody  told  me,  a  few 
days  after  I  began  to  emulate  Mr.  Wil- 
lard,  that  Mr.  Willard  didn't  write  those 
pieces  at  all,  but  that  they  were  written 
by  Mr.  George  Creel.  It  was  like  tell 
ing  me  there  was  no  Santa  Glaus.  I 
think  I  cried  a  little,  but  I  kept  right  on 
with  the  exercises,  and  now  anybody 
that  says  a  word  against  George  Creel 
has  me,  with  five  or  six  years  of  unre 
mitting  training,  to  fight. 

I  take,  as  I  said,  the  printed  word 
seriously.  A  dealer  myself  in  the 
printed  word,  it  never  occurs  to  me  that 
anyone  might  read  my  own  carefully 
chiseled  phrases  and  say,  "Yes,  but  is  it 
true?"  or,  "Oh,  well,  I  doubt  it,"  or  even, 
"What  of  it?" 

I  am  like  Ernest  in  the  old  Ade  fable, 
who  had  been  Kicked  in  the  Head  by  a 
Mule  when  young  and  Believed  every 
thing  he  Read  in  the  Sunday  Papers. 

And  so  this  evening — my  passion  for 
truth  makes  me  refrain  from  saying  the 

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Overset 

other  day,  because  it  wasn't  the  other 
day,  though  it  will  be  when  this  appears 
— I  read,  among  other  things  on  the 
woman's  page  (and  what  I  started  out 
to  say  was  that  I  am  not  of  the  patroniz 
ing  sort  that  pretends  not  to  read  the 
woman's  page)  an  "article,"  as  they 
call  them,  by  Dorothy  Dix.  It  was  en 
titled,  "Do  Women  Want  to  Be 
Petted?"  and,  with  my  habit  of  answer 
ing  every  question,  rhetorical  or  not, 
that  is  put  to  me,  I  said,  "No,"  and 
added,  with  a  revealing  candor  that  I 
use  in  meditation,  "At  any  rate,  not  by 
me." 

Well,  I  read  this  piece  of  Miss  Dix's, 
which  told  of  the  sufferings  and  sacri 
fices  of  the  average  married  woman. 
"The  only  thing  that  can  repay  her,"  I 
read,  as  I  stood  in  the  warm,  well- 
lighted  Subway  train,  speeding  along 
through  the  night,  after  a  jolly  day 
spent  in  the  joys  of  literary  composition 
in  a  room  full  of  reporter-pounded  type 
writers  and  thrillingly  noisy  telegraph 
instruments,  "is  the  tenderness  of  her 
58 


Overset 

husband.  His  kisses,  warm  with  love, 
and  not  a  chill  peck  of  duty  on  the  cheek, 
his  murmured  words  of  endearment,  are 
the  magic  coin  that  settles  the  long  score 
that  a  woman  charges  up  against  matri 
mony,  and  that  makes  her  rich  in  happi 
ness." 

'The    woman"— by    this    time    the 
train  had  got  to  Fourteenth  Street,  and 
the  crowd  of  eager,  merry  homegoers, 
ardent  to  arrive  at  their  joyous  apart 
ments,    made    reading    difficult — "who 
has  looked  from  the  lovely  gown  and 
soft  furs  in  a  show  window  to  her  own 
shabby  frock,  and  known  that  she  could 
afford  nothing  better  because  the  chil 
dren  had  to  have  shoes  and  the  coal  was 
nearly  out;  the  woman  who  has  wrestled 
with  pots  and  pans  and  the  wash  tub  all 
day,  while  the  baby  howled  and  the 
other  children  fought,  until  her  nerves 
were  raw — will  she  be  soothed  by  her 
husband's  treating  her  as  an  equal  when 
he  comes  home  at  night,  and  conversing 
with  her  about  the  Federal  Reserve  bank 
and  the  railroad  situation?    I  trow  not." 
59 


Overset 

"But  if" — and  this  took  me  from 
Seventy-second  Street  to  Cathedral 
Parkway — "he  puts  his  arms  about  her, 
and  pats  her  on  the  shoulder,  and  says, 
There,  there,  now/  and  tells  her  she  is 
the  dearest,  bravest,  most  wonderful 
little  woman  in  the  world,  and  he  just 
wishes  he  had  the  money  to  doll  her  up 
and  show  people  that  his  little  wifekins 
has  got  any  of  those  living  pictures 
backed  off  the  screen,  why,  somehow,  the 
tiredness  goes  out  of  her  back,  and  the 
envy  out  of  her  soul,  and  the  sun's  come 
again  in  her  heaven,  and  she  is  ready 
to  go  down  on  her  knees  and  thank  God 
for  giving  her  such  a  husband,  even  if  he 
isn't  a  money  maker." 

I  emerged  from  the  Subway,  and  soft 
and  glowing  with  the  romance  Miss  Dix 
had  suffused  me  with,  1  stopped  at  a 
florist's.  "How  much,"  I  asked,  "are 
those  violets?"  "Two  dollars,"  he  said, 
as  who  should  say,  "And  what  a  privi 
lege  to  buy  them  at  any  price!"  "I 
send  them?"  "No,"  1  said.  He 
wrapped  them  with  the  contemptuous 
60 


Overset 

air  florists  have  for  men  who  carry  their 
offerings  with  them.  They,  I  take  it,  are 
the  transient  trade.  Your  real  wooer,  it 
came  over  me  in  a  flash,  never  brings  his 
flowers. 

I  entered  the  house  with  the  airy  tread 
of  youth,  adventurous  and  confident. 
The  Little  Woman,  as  I  call  her  in  my 
lighter  moments,  was  seated  at  her  desk 
writing  checks — struggling,  I  mused, 
with  the  problem  of  inelastic  currency. 

"See,"  I  said,  pointing  with  modest 
triumph  to  the  violets. 

"Where  did  you  get  them?"  she 
asked. 

"At  Papakopolos's,"  I  said. 

"Well,"  she  said — and  1  have  no 
doubt  she  was  right — "if  you  paid  more 
than  a  dollar  you  got  stuck.  You  al 
ways  let  a  florist  give  you  anything.  Go 
and  put  them  in  the  ice  box." 

"There,  there,  now,"  I  said,  quoting 
Miss  Dix.  "You  are  the  dearest,  brav 
est,  most  wonderful  little  woman  in  the 
world.  I  just  wish  I  had  the  money  to 
doll  you  up  and  show  people  that  my 
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Overset 

little  wifekins  has  got  any  of  those  living 
pictures  backed  off  the  screen/' 

"Since  when/'  asked  the  Little 
Woman — and  she  is  the  bravest,  as  Miss 
Dix  says,  1.  w.  in  the  world — "since 
when  have  living  pictures  gone  into  the 
movies,  and  is  that  where  you  go  in  the 
afternoon  when  I  call  the  office  at  three 
and  they  say  you've  left  for  the  day? 
No  wonder  you  never  make  any  money. 
.  .  .  Do  you  know  why  Wabash  Pre 
ferred  A  and  those  other  railroad  stocks 
don't  go  up?  It's  partly  because  of  the 
full-crew  law  and  partly  because  of  the 
Federal  Reserve  Board." 

Well,  she  had  me  there.  I  don't  know 
much  about  the  Federal  Reserve,  and 
my  whole  interest  in  the  railroad  situa 
tion  is  in  whether  a  train  I  am  on  or  am 
waiting  for  is  on  time  or  late. 

I  get  about  a  good  deal,  looking  for 
what  my  admirers  call  Material  for 
my  Little  Articles,  and  I  meet  lots  of 
people.  If  I  ever  meet  Miss  Dix,  I  am 
going  to  introduce  her  to  the  Little 
Woman. 

62 


Overset 

PERHAPS  somebody  versed  in  psy 
chology  can  tell  us  why  most  persons, 
when  you  tell  them  you  have  lost  some 
thing,  deny,  with  considerable  alibiing 
vehemence,  having  seen  the  lost  object. 
Why  is  the  concern  over  their  own  inno 
cence,  which  has  not  been  impugned, 
greater  than  their  sorrow  over  your  loss? 

IT  STRIKES  us  that  there  is  consider 
able  swank  about  things  such  as  Lord 
Northcliffe  is  reported  to  have  said  to 
President  Harding.  Their  conversation 
ran  entirely,  Lord  Northcliffe  said,  to 
newspaper  publishing.  "He  and  I 
agreed,"  said  Lord  Northcliffe,  "that  the 
last  hour  before  going  to  press  was  by 
far  the  most  interesting  in  the  daily  life 
of  a  publisher."  Probably  it  is;  but 
where  is  the  average  publisher  at  that 
witching  hour?  Far  from  the  madding 
local  room's  or  composing  room's  igno 
ble  strife.  Not  that  it  may  not  be  the 
most  interesting  time  in  his  day,  but  it 
generally  is  spent,  thanks  to  the  reporter, 
the  copyreader,  the  night,  managing,  and 

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Overset 

city  editors,  and  the  make-up  editor,  in 
some  even  pleasanter  spot  than  a  news 
paper  office. 

We  know.  We  used  to  postpone  writ 
ing  our  stuff  until  a  few  minutes  before 
the  paper  went  to  press;  that  may  be  an 
interesting  time,  but,  it  occurs  to  us  at 
the  instant  of  trembling  to  press,  it  also 
is  a  terrifying  one. 

"I  WONDER  sometimes,"  wondered  the 
President  at  Lancaster,  "if  you  appreci 
ate  the  indescribable  charms  of  the  sec 
tion  in  which  you  live."  The  answer, 
no  matter  what  audience  the  President  is 
addressing,  and  no  matter  where,  is 
"No."  Besides,  if  people  appreciated 
the  charms  of  the  sections  they  lived  in, 
the  railroad  situation  might  be  even 
worse. 

"DON'T  sneeze  into  books,"  say  the 
public  library  authorities.  Cancel  our 
order  for  those  Russian  novels. 

"WOMAN,"  says  Miss  Pauline  Jacob- 
son  in  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin,  "is 
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Overset 

the  conserver,  the  tender/'    Woman  the 
tender!     Man  the  lifeboat! 

OUR  favorite  way  of  wasting  time  is 
trying  to  say  something  in  praise  of  pa 
per  towels. 

PRINCETON  won  the  intercollegiate 
singing  contest  last  night,  but  to-day's 
papers  give  small  space  to  the  story.  If 
Princeton  had  won  at  football,  there 
would  have  been  columns  and  columns 
printed  about  it.  Yet  most  men,  after 
graduation,  devote  more  time  to  singing 
than  to  football.  .  .  .  Which,  like 
much  of  our  reasoning,  is  false.  Most 
men  devote  less  time  to  murdering  than 
to  church-going,  yet  frequently  a  good 
murder  story  will  crowd  the  report  of  a 
sermon  off  the  front  page. 

FEW  are  the  plays  produced,  these 
highly  personal  days,  not  under  the 
"personal"  direction  of  somebody;  mat 
ters  having  so-and-so's  "personal"  super 
vision  are  common.  Yesterday,  on 

65 


Overset 

Broadway  near  One  Hundred  and  Eighth 
Street,  we  observed  that  permanent 
waves  would  have  the  "personal"  at 
tention  of  the  proprietor. 

It  occurred  to  us  to  wonder  whether 
The  Conning  Tower  public  realized, 
or,  realizing,  valued  to  the  full,  the 
deeply  and  intimately  personal  service 
that  is  their  privilege. 

We  personally  rise  every  morning,  and 
personally  turn  on  the  bath  water. 
While  the  tub  is  filling  do  we  have  the 
papers  read  to  us?  No.  We  ourself  go 
to  the  front  door,  bring  in  the  milk,  the 
cream,  and  the  papers,  and  inspect  per 
sonally  the  front,  the  editorial,  and  the 
sporting  pages  of  three  papers.  After 
our  personal  bath,  we  tell  Miriam — tell 
her  personally — that  we  are  ready  for 
breakfast.  From  the  first  spoonful  of 
grapefruit  to  the  ultimate  swallow  of 
coffee,  there  is  nothing  impersonal  about 
our  breakfast. 

But  it  is  only  after  breakfast  that  per 
sonal  service  to  the  public  begins.  Either 
we  personally  enter  the  Subway  or  go  to 
66 


Overset 

the  garage;  if  the  latter,  we  personally 
start  the  car,  personally  yell  for  the  ele 
vator  nine  times,  personally  put  the  car 
on  to  it,  and  drive,  unchauffeured,  down 
town.  Entering  the  office,  we  personally 
look  for  Julius,  the  office  boy,  who  has 
not  come  in  yet.  So  we  personally  get 
our  mail  out  of  the  box  and  open  it,  un 
assisted.  Also  we  personally  retrieve 
our  waste  basket,  which  has  been  stolen 
during  the  night.  Personally  we  mark 
what  contributions  we  are  going  to  use 
— mark  them,  with  a  personally  filled 
fountain  pen,  CT  min  or  nonp — we  carry 
them  to  the  composing  room,  personally 
giving  them  to  Mr.  Clinton  Ball,  who 
generally  gives  them  to  Joe  to  set.  Then 
we  go  upstairs  and  write,  personally, 
what  we  think  will  be  enough  stuff  to  fill. 
In  an  hour  or  two,  as  timed  by  our  per 
sonal  watch,  we  go  downstairs  again  and 
ask  for  a  proof.  In  ten  minutes  Al 
gives  us  one.  We  go,  ourself,  to  find  a 
column  rule,  and  measure  up.  If  we  are 
short,  we  add  enough  to  fill,  sometimes 
finding,  personally,  a  paragraph  or  two 

67 


Overset 

on  the  overset  galley,  which  we  per 
sonally  exhume  and  carry  to  the  bane. 
For  doing  this,  Mr.  Ball  or  someone  else 
hands  us  a  personal  remark. 

Then  we  emerge  into  the  warm,  im 
personal  sunshine. 

"AMBASSADOR  HARVEY  will  entertain  a 
large  party  of  compatriots/'  cables  the 
Herald,  although  it  is  conceivable  that 
he  may  do  nothing  of  the  kind. 

SPEAKING  of  screen  stars,  there's  the 
mosquito. 

AUTOMOBILES  are  getting  so  cheap 
that  it  hardly  pays  a  motor  thief  for  his 
time. 

OFFERED  as  a  statistic:  Ninety-two 
per  cent,  of  the  stuff  told  you  in  confi 
dence  you  couldn't  get  anybody  else  to 
listen  to. 

THE  esteemed  American,  in  its  cap 
sule    five-column     account    of     Peggy 
68 


Overset 

Joyce's  past,  says  something  about  her 
penchant  for  fine  feathers.  Maybe  it 
was  the  fine  feathers  that  made  her  what 
she  was. 

"SOMETIMES  we  fear/'  fears  Christo 
pher  Morley  in  the  Evening  Post,  "that 
the  newspapers,  in  spite  of  the  large  at 
tention  they  pay  to  sport,  do  not  show 
themselves  very  good  sportsmen/'  No, 
they  infrequently  are  good  sportsmen; 
but  even  so  they  are  better  than  any 
other  group  we  have  intimate  knowledge 
of. 

As  to  the  large  attention  newspapers 
pay  to  sport,  few  of  them  do.  Most  of 
the  papers  we  see  have  "sporting"  pages 
top  heavy  with  boxing,  racing,  and  base 
ball  news  and  comment. 

WE  ARE  in  violent  favor  of  a  Write 
Your  Own  Obituary  Drive.  Including 
the  headline.  Our  chief  fear,  when  we 
see  a  careless  motorist  making  for  our 
headlights,  is — if  we  chance  not  to  be 
alone — that  the  headline  will  be  "Famed 
69 


Overset 

Bard  Joy  Rides  to  Doom"  or  "Noted 
Wit  in  Death  Pact." 

YEARS  ago  we  envisaged  our  obituary 
headline  as  "Famed  Bard's  End  Calm"; 
but  now  we  foresee  it  as  "Aged  Net  Star 
Dies  on  Court." 

"!F  YOU  want  to  get  rich  from  writ 
ing,"  counsels  the  astute  Mr.  Don  Mar 
quis,  "write  the  sort  of  thing  that  is  read 
by  persons  who  move  their  lips  when 
they  are  reading  to  themselves."  No. 
Write  the  kind  of  stuff  about  which 
everybody  says,  "Of  course  it's  terrible 
stuff,  but  it  must  be  popular  or  they 
wouldn't  print  it." 

HER  father  says  that  Peggy  Joyce,  as 
a  little  girl,  was  always  trying  to  please 
everybody;  and  our  astonishment  is 
great  that  she  didn't  grow  up  to  be  an 
unsuccessful  journalist. 

THERE  are  seventy  stanzas  in  the  Uru 
guay  national  anthem,  which  fact  may 
account  for  the  Uruguay  standing  army. 
70 


Overset 

WE  HAVE  read  all  the  dispatches  from 
Denver,  for  the  labor  question  is  mo 
mentous;  but  we  haven't  seen  a  line 
about  the  A.  F.  or  L/s  attitude  about 
quality  or  volume  of  work. 

IT'S  enough  to  confuse  even  so  me 
thodical  a  person  as  ourself.  Not  only 
is  this  Milk  Week,  but  also  it  is  Zane 
Grey  Week.  The  only  thing  to  do  is  to 
quaff  Mr.  Grey's  health  in  a  beaker  of — 
well,  say  Grade  C  Milk. 

A  gifted  but  modest  author  of  our  ac 
quaintance  suggests  that  next  week  be 
Extra  Heavy  Cream  Week  and  Henry 
Sydnor  Harrison  Week. 

"WHY  in  hell  don't  you  keep  still?" 
Mr.  Charles  W.  Morse  is  quoted  by  the 
World  as  having  said  to  newspapermen 
who  asked  him  whether  he  had  anything 
to  say  about  the  government's  investiga 
tion  of  his  shipbuilding  for  it.  Whether 
any  newspaperman  replied  to  Mr. 
Morse's  query  the  record  fails  to  state, 
but  one  answer  might  have  been  to  the 


Overset 

effect  that  it  is  the  newspaperman's  job, 
as  a  public  servant,  to  print  the  news; 
and  that  he  couldn't  get  the  news  by 
keeping  still. 

Also  it  occurs  to  us  that  the  news 
paperman  meets  only  two  classes:  Those 
who  want  to  know  why  he  printed  it  and 
those  who  want  to  know  why  he  didn't. 
And  in  the  course  of  years  the  news 
paperman,  who  in  an  effort  at  honesty, 
prints  many  things  and  omits  printing 
many  things,  loses  many  friendships — 
friendships  insecurely  founded,  perhaps, 
but  friendships  whose  wabbly  founda 
tions  seem  safe  until  they  crumble.  Our 
advice  to  young  men  about  to  enter  jour 
nalism  is  to  enter  it  if  possible,  for  any 
other  business  or  profession  seems  to  us 
like  shooting  craps  for  no  stakes.  But 
to  the  youth  we  should  add:  "Any 
friends  you  must  consider  as  so  much 
velvet." 

WE  ARE  notoriously  a  good  sailor,  and 
the  undulatory  motion  of  a  ship  has 
found,  finds,  and  shall  find  us  unafraid; 

72 


Overset 

but  when  Mr.  Roscoe  Arbuckle  says, 
"Why  this  great  misfortune  should  have 
fallen  upon  me  is  a  mystery  that  only 
God  can  and  will  some  day  reveal/'  and 
"I  have  always  rested  my  cause  in  a  pro 
found  belief  in  Divine  Justice,  and  in 
confidence  in  the  great  heart  and  fair 
ness  of  the  American  people" — when  he 
says  that,  we  know  precisely  how  the 
less  sturdy  passengers  on  a  rolling  ship 
feel. 


OUR  friends  accuse  us  of  nepotism. 
They  say  our  policy  is  Uncle  Sam  and 
Anti-Wilson. 


ONE  of  the  things  we  should  like  to 
live  500  years  for  is  the  pleasure  we 
should  derive  from  reading  old  news 
paper  files.  In  2016,  for  instance,  we 
should  look  at  the  files  for  Sunday,  Jan 
uary  23,  1916.  "Child  Labor  Day!" 
somebody  would  say.  "What  was  that?" 
And  we  should  have  to  explain  that  a 
hundred  years  ago  children  were  al- 

73 


Overset 

lowed  to  labor  for  a  living;   and  the 
thing  actually  had  to  be  stopped  by  law. 

BEFORE  knowing  what  the  Attorney 
General  thinks  about  Debs,  it  is  neces 
sary  to  know  his  definition  of  certain 
words.  What  is  Mr.  Daugherty's  idea, 
for  example,  of  usefulness?  "I  hope," 
he  says,  "he  may  direct  his  talents  to  a 
useful  purpose/'  Why  not  have  said 
"to  what  I  consider  a  useful  purpose"? 
For  surely  the  talents  of  Mr.  Debs  will 
be  directed  to  what  Mr.  Debs  calls  a  use 
ful  purpose. 

And  Mr.  Daugherty  speaks  of  Debs 
as  "pursuing  a  theory  erroneous  in  prin 
ciple."  Is  it?  Has  Mr.  Daugherty  a 
right  to  assert  it  is  erroneous?  Has  Mr. 
Debs  a  right  to  say  it  is  a  correct  theory? 
There  are  few  words  that  mean  the  same 
thing  to  two  persons;  which  is  one  of 
the  things  that  makes  writing  a  hard 
job.  For  even  when  a  writer  knows 
what  he  means,  which  is  not  always,  and 
even  when  he  says  what  he  means,  which 
is  less  frequently,  no  reader  can  go 

74 


Overset 

through  a  season  with  a  perfect  fielding 
average. 

'DEATH  seems  to  give  them" — Flor 
ence  Woolston  is  writing  in  the  New  Re 
public  about  twelve-year-old  boys — "no 
sense  of  mystery  and.  awe.  'Gee !  a  thou 
sand  killed,  to-day/  That  Ace  has  got 
his/  'Say,  John  Bowers  was  gassed  and 
he's  gone  now.'  They  look  over  the 
casualty  lists  as  grown-ups  might  read 
lists  of  guests  at  a  reception.  It  may  be 
because  youth  cannot  understand  the 
tragedy  and  heartache  back  of  the  golden 
stars  on  the  service  flags,  but  I  think  it 
goes  deeper  than  that."  It  does.  But 
perhaps  it  is  because  youth,  and  youth 
alone,  does  understand  the  meaning  of 
death  that  youth  is  casual  about  it. 
And  perhaps  it  is  we,  who  think  of 
death  as  important,  who  do  not  under 
stand  it. 

WITH  all  the  world  partisan,  fairness 
is  more  than  ever  a  question  of  defini 
tion.  One  man's  notion  of  fairness  is 

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Overset 

to  consider  a  crook  every  man  whose 
laundry  bill  is  more  than  a  dollar  a 
week;  and  another  man's  idea  of  it  is  to 
consider  a  crook  every  man  who  ap 
pears  to  have  no  laundry  bill  at  all.  A 
fair-minded  public  should  realize  that 
fair-mindedness,  these  days,  is  impossi 
ble. 

As  WE  envisage  Radicalism,  if  you  go 
to  sleep  a  Radical  to-night  you  wake  a 
Conservative  to-morrow  morning.  Radi 
calism  moves  too  fast;  it  passes  you  in 
the  night.  Therefore,  if  you  want  to 
remain  a  Radical,  you  cannot  afford  to 
sleep.  You  can't  trust  Radicalism  out 
of  your  sight.  That,  perhaps,  is  why 
the  poor  Radical  is  so  tired.  But  some 
of  us  need  the  sleep;  and  so  we  stretch 
ourselves  on  the  Miraculous  Mattress  of 
Conservatism  and  let  the  silly  Universe 
shift  for  its  ungrateful  old  self. 

WHERE  the  brook  of  Youth  and  the 
river  of  Age  meet  is  an  interesting  point. 
One  arrives  there  when  one  is  too  old 


Overset 

to  rush  up  to  the  net,  and  too  young  to 
take  up  the  sedentary  and  ancient  game 
of  golf. 

A  TYPICAL  human  being  is  one  who 
feels  no  thrill  of  virtuous  elation  when 
he  lends  a  probably  worthless  man,  who 
he  knows  won't  pay  it  back,  $100  with 
out  interest  ;  but  who  fairly  exudes  good 
ness  when  he  buys  a  Victory  Liberty 
Bond,  for  which  he  gets  4j4  per  cent. 


WHETHER  any  studies  are  to  be  jet 
tisoned  in  order  to  shorten  the  West 
Point  course  one  year  is  not  evident. 
Greek,  Latin,  and  English,  three  obso 
lescent  languages,  are  generally  the  first 
to  go.  We  hate  to  see  Greek  and  Latin 
dropped  from  various  curricula,  but  the 
chucking  of  English  is  unimportant. 
The  use  of  it  is  purely  academic  and  the 
study  of  it  does  the  graduate  no  good  in 
his  terrific  struggle  to  pay  for  a  five- 
room  apartment.  At  best,  it  gives  him 
a  taste  for  reading,  and  reading  cuts  into 
evenings  that  might  be  spent  meeting 

77 


Overset 

people  who  will  advance  him  in  a  busi 
ness  way. 

OUR  regrets  for  having  studied  Ger 
man  instead  of  French  are  few.  Our 
choice  of  German  was  made  because  it 
enabled  us  to  get  through  at  noon,  as 
French  was  scheduled  for  2  p.  M.  And 
getting  through  at  noon  enabled  us  to 
attend  the  excellent  variety  shows  at  the 
Olympic  Theater  and  the  Chicago  Opera 
House,  which  began  at  12:30  p.  M. 
These  were  the  days  when  Lady  Sholto 
Douglas  sang  "The  Daughter  of  Officer 
Porter,"  when  Bobby  Gaylor  used  to 
say,  "Well,  annyhow,"  when  George 
M.,  of  the  Four  Cohans,  began  the  act 
with  "If  I  don't  say  'Rah!  rah!  rah!' 
before  breakfast  every  morning,  I  get 
nervous,"  when  Williams  and  Walker 
sang  "Oh  I  Don't  Know,  You're  Not  So 
Warm,"  when  Johnny  Carroll  sang  "Pat 
M  alone  Forgot  That  He  Was  Dead," 
and  Carrie  Scott,  "Just  a  Plain  American 
Girl  Is  Good  Enough  for  Me,"  when  the 
Russell  Brothers  used  to  say,  "Take  the 

78 


Overset 

cow  out  of  the  hammock!"  and  Johnny 
Ray  said,  "I've  been  up  sixteen  flights  of 
stairs  and  every  door's  a  window."  Oh, 
yes,  and  Helena  iMora,  the  Female  Bari 
tone,  after  singing  "The  Moth  and  the 
Flame,"  used  to  recite  Ella  Wheeler  Wil- 
cox's  poem  ending,  "And  Salvator,  Sal 
vator,  Salvator  won!" 

In  the  joyous  days  when  vaudeville 
was  a  variety  show  there  were  other  acts 
that  quickened  the  beats  of  a  young 
pulse.  There  were  Billy  Clifford  and 
Maud  Huth — he  used  to  wear  a  light 
tan  coat  with  big  pearl  buttons,  and  the 
team  cake-walked  to  "The  Georgia 
Camp  Meeting";  Barney  Fagan  and 
Henrietta  Byron,  who  sang  "My  Gal's  a 
High  Born  Lady";  Caron  and  Herbert, 
one  of  whom  used  to  dive  into  the  water 
painted  on  the  back  drop;  Falke  and 
Semon,  who  played  on  many  instru 
ments  and  one  of  whom  wore  dozens  of 
hats;  Mazuz  and  Mazette,  one  of  whom 
used  to  do  a  somersault  while  the  other's 
back  was  turned,  and  when  he  said, 
"How'd  you  like  that?"  the  other  would 

79 


Overset 

say,  in  a  cracked  voice,  "Good!";  Smith 
and  Cooke,  the  comical  sharpshooters; 
and  Binns  and  Binns,  whom  we  recall 
with  joy,  but  whose  act  we  forget.  Not 
to  omit  the  daring  and  beautiful  bare 
foot  but  voluminously  beskirted  Miss 
Mildred  Howard  De  Gray. — Pardon  the 
tears  of  an  old,  old  man,  but  those,  as 
Japheth  observed  to  Noah,  were  the 
happy  days. 

THE  mattress  school  of  drama,  re 
ferred  to  recently  by  Rabbi  Wise,  proba 
bly  will  hold  commencement  exercises 
soon.  It  was  so  a  few  years  ago  when 
it  was  the  courtroom,  instead  of  the  bed 
room,  drama.  It  is  likely  to  be  so  al 
ways.  At  any  rate,  it  has  been  so.  The 
comic  songs  of  twenty  or  twenty-five 
years  ago  had  for  their  motif  the  awak 
ening  effect  of  urban  and  roguish  pur 
suits  upon  the  bucolic  maiden.  There 
were  "Oh,  Uncle  John,  Isn't  It  Nice  on 
Broadway?"  "And  Her  Golden  Hair 
Was  Hanging  Down  Her  Back,"  "She 
Never  Saw  the  Streets  of  Cairo,"  and 
80 


Overset 

"Oh,  Mr.  Austin,  Since  I've  Been  to 
Boston."  And  there  were  hundreds  of 
serious  songs  about  Rural  Virtue  and 
Metropolitan  Vice. 


"FAIR  AND  WARMER;  SOUTH 
ERLY  WINDS" 

In  an  anti-administration  newspaper 

As  though  this  had  not  already  been 
a  season  such  as  has  not  been  under 
gone  by  red-blooded  Americans  since  our 
nation  shook  off  the  yoke  of  tyranny,  the 
latest  announcement  by  the  Administra 
tion's  paid  weather-bureau  affronts  the 
patriotism  of  all  of  us  who  have  been  led 
to  believe  that  an  American  winter 
means  a  lack  of  insipid,  mild,  vacillat 
ing  weather. 

"Southerly  winds"  indeed!  This 
truckling  to  political  influences  is  as  re 
volting  as  it  is  obvious.  How  long  this 
sort  of  thing  is  to  continue  unless  some 
thing  is  done,  we  hesitate  to  predict. 

All  honor  to  the  patriotic,  virile 
81 


Overset 

American  Senators  who  have  signed  the 
protest  against  this  added  insult  to  our 
institutions. 


"FAIR  AND  WARMER;  SOUTH 
ERLY  WINDS." 

In  a  pro-administration  newspaper 

This  is  a  summary  of  the  past  achieve 
ments  of  the  President;  an  earnest  of 
even  greater  things  to  come.  Never  had 
we  had  so  fine  a  winter.  "It  is  impossi 
ble/'  said  the  partisan  detractors  of  the 
Administration.  "There  never  has  been 
a  snowless  winter."  Did  that  daunt  one 
to  whom  precedent  is  not  to  be  revered 
merely  because  it  is  precedent?  No. 
Like  in  other  matters,  he  sees  no  reason 
for  not  doing  a  great,  an  apparently  im 
possible  thing  merely  because  it  never 
has  been  done. 

This  is  the  spirit  that  won  the  war — 

fairness  and  warmth.     And  the  gentle 

zephyrs   blowing  from   the   Southland, 

which  contributed  so  many  of  her  brave 

82 


Overset 

sons  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democ 
racy,  are  but  an  added  tribute  to  an 
Administration  which,  weathering  all 
storms,  sees  the  harbor,  shining  fair  and 
warm,  near  at  hand. 

THE  TRAIN  TALKERS 

On  the  Washington  to  New  York  mid 
night  train.  A  woman  and  a  porter: 

"Upper  5." 

"Right  here,  ma'am." 

"Any  chance  of  getting  a  lower?" 

"No,  ma'am;  all  taken." 

"No  chance  of  getting  a  lower?" 

"No,  ma'am;  they're  all  taken." 

"No  chance  even  after  we  get  start 
ed?" 

"No,  ma'am." 

"That's  what  they  told  me  at  the 
ticket  office." 

"Yes'm." 

"I  went  early  yesterday  morning. 
Thought  sure  I'd  get  a  lower  going  early 
as  that — two  days  ahead.  They  told 
me  they  were  all  sold." 

83 


Overset 

"Yes'm." 

"You  don't  think  there'd  be  a  chance 
of  getting  a  lower?" 

"No'm." 

"You  would  think  that  going  early  as 
that  would  be  time  enough  .  .  . 
What  time  do  we  get  in?" 

"Six-fifty." 

"That's  about — let  me  see — ten  min 
utes  before  six — no,  seven — yes,  ten  min 
utes  to  seven,  isn't  it?" 

"Yes'm." 

"Do  we  have  to  get  out  then?" 

"No,  ma'am.  You  can  stay  in  the  car 
till  seven-thirty." 

"Well,  better  wake  me  about  seven." 

"Yes'm." 

"Oh,  porter!" 

"Yes'm." 

"Better  wake  me  at  a  quarter  to  seven. 
Then  I  won't  have  to  hurry." 

"Yes'm." 

"And  if  you  hear  of  a  lower,  you'll  let 
me  know,  won't  you?" 

"Yes'm." 


Overset 


BOOK  REVIEWS 

''Mary  Olivier"  by  Mary  Sinclair 
I 

Sunday  .  .  .  you  wondered 
whether  you'd  read  the  Sunday  papers 
or  "Mary  Olivier."  Maybe  both. 

You  were  thirty-eight.  Nobody  could 
do  good  work  till  fifty.  Or  past  fifty. 
When  you  were  twenty-two  and  your 
work  was  as  bad  you  said,  "It  isn't  bad 
for  a  child."  And  now  you  were  grown 
up.  People  died  before  thirty-eight. 
Chatterton.  Keats.  Stephen  Crane.  You 
never  would  do  good  work.  You  would 
always  find  excuses  for  not  doing  it. 

II 

Page  231.  Page  232.  Page  233.  And 
so  it  went.  Mary  was  always  missing 
things.  Somebody  was  always  taking 
the  joy  out  of  her  life. 

I  wonder  what  Briggs's  cartoon  is. 
You  looked.  You  read  the  whole  pa- 
85 


Overset 

per.     All   of   them     .     .     .    And   then 
the  book  again. 

Ill 

The  strange  selfishness  of  women. 
That  girl  in  "The  Divine  Fire."  You 
remembered  the  scene  where  she  helped 
him  arrange  the  books.  The  soft  pur 
ring  kitten;  with  claws.  And  'The 
Combined  Maze."  And  'Three  Sis 
ters,"  that  was  good.  And  'The  Bel 
fry."  And  "The  Tree  of  Heaven."  You 
were  reading  that  when  you  thought  the 
Leviathan  had  been  torpedoed. 

Mary's  mother  was  the  strongest.  She 
squeezed  Mary. 

IV 

Miss  Sinclair  can  write.  She  tried  to 
do  a  big  job.  You  feel  she  tried  too 
hard.  Page  380.  The  End. 

V 

You  must  return  the  book  to  Mrs. 
Miller. 

86 


Overset 


"Lady  Luck,"  by  Hugh  Wiley 

"Shoots- two  bits.  Fade  me,  does  you 
crave  action." 

"You's  faded.     Roll  'em,  Wilecat." 

"Wham !  An'  I  reads  .  .  .  six-ace. 
Shoots  de  package.  De  big  nugget  keeps 
de  pikers  out.  Gallopers,  see  kin  you 
clatter  home  to  yo'  box-stall.  Bam! 
And  I  reads  .  .  .  six-five.  Shoots 
de  dollar.  Little  cubes,  show  yo'  fo'th 
dimension.  I  rolls  a  fo'  and  a  trey,  or 
de  winnin'  number.  I  got  two  dollars. 
Shoots  fifty  cents  .  .  .  and  I  reads 
six.  Ps  a  sixie  fm  Dixie.  Six  is  mah 
objective.  Football  dice,  sco'  yo'  touch 
down  .  ;  .  an'  I  reads  fo'-deuce. 
Shower  down/' 

And  so  Wildcat  Vitus  Marsden,  for  it 
was  he,  with  his  fortune  of  two  dollars 
and  fifty  cents,  went  forth  to  the  nearest 
bookstore  to  buy  Hugh  Wiley's  swell  and 
elegant  book,  published  yesterday  and 
entitled  "Lady  Luck." 
87 


Overset 

"Sparks  of  Laughter  No.  2" 
'Stewart  Anderson,  Inc. 

READERS  and  friends — and  I  hope  that 
those  words  are  as  interchangeable  as 
words  were  the  night  of  the  dinner  party 
when  the  young  lady  was  sitting  next  to 
the  Bishop  of  X.  It  seems  it  was  the 
first  time  she  had  been  quite  so  close  to 
such  a  dignitary,  and  her  tongue  was 
paralyzed.  The  silence  between  them 
became  more  and  more  embarrassing  to 
her.  At  length  some  fruit  was  passed, 
and  she  snatched  at  the  opportunity  to 
open  a  conversation,  and  said,  "Are  you 
very  fond  of  bananas?"  The  dear  old 
prelate,  a  trifle  deaf,  thought  she  said 
"pyjamas,"  and  after  thinking  for  a  mo 
ment,  chin  on  hand,  he  answered,  "My 
dear  young  lady,  since  you  have  asked 
me  I  will  frankly  state  that  I  much  pre 
fer  the  old-fashioned  nightshirt." 

But  seriously,  dear  readers,  I  am 
proud  and  pleased  to  have  as  my  theme 
this  morning  a  book  that  needs,  if  I  may 
88 


Overset 

be  allowed  to  say  so,  not  my  weak  praise 
to  place  it  among  the  most  enjoyable 
books  of  the  year,  nay,  of  all  time.  "Lit 
erature,"  says  Thomas  A.  Edison,  "is  a 
very  good  thing/*  And  humor,  if  I  may 
be  allowed  to  paraphrase  the  "Wizard's" 
sage  observation,  is  also  a  very  good 
thing.  It  lightens  the  rough  pathways. 
I  cannot  dedicate,  I  cannot  consecrate, 
I  cannot  hallow  this  great — and  I  use 
that  word  advisedly — leavener.  It  is  a 
contagious  thing,  humor,  like  the  father 
of  the  college  student  who  met  the  col 
lege  professor.  "I  am  delighted  to  meet 
you/'  said  he,  shaking  hands  warmly 
with  the  old  professor,  from  whom,  I 
may  say,  years  of  grubbing  among  books 
had  not  eliminated  a  keen  sense  of  hu 
mor.  "My  son  took  algebra  from  you 
last  year,  you  know."  "Pardon  me," 
said  the  professor,  with  a  merry  twinkle 
in  his  eye,  "he  was  exposed  to  it,  but  he 
did  not  take  it." 

I  am  having  a  good  deal  of  trouble,  in 
my  stuttering  way,  getting  to  my  sub 
ject.  And  speaking  of  stuttering,  it 

89 


Overset 

seems  that  one  day  in  the  Police  Court 
the  Judge  asked  the  prisoner  his  name. 
"F-f-f-f!"  said  the  prisoner,  swallow 
ing  the  atmosphere,  and  starting  again. 
"  F-f-f-f -f !"  Swallowing  still  more  atmos 
phere,  he  started  again,  "F-f-f-f-f!" 
"Officer!  Officer!"  exclaimed  the  Judge. 
"What  is  this  man  charged  with?"  "Be- 
gorra,  Your  Honor,"  said  the  officer,  who 
was  a  son  of  the  "Ould  Sod,"  "an'  I  think 
he  be  charged  with  sody  wather." 

Well,  readers,  I  think  I  am  not  over 
stating  things  very  much  this  morning 
when  I  say  that  I  never  have  enjoyed  a 
book  more  than  the  little  tome  that  is 
the  subject  of  my  little  talk.  In  fact,  so 
enthralled  was  I  by  it  that  I  arrived  here 
a  little  late.  "Well,  Mr.  Adams,"  said 
Mr.  Lambert  to  me,  "you  are  a  little 
late."  "Yes,"  said  I.  "But  better  late 
than  never." 

The  book  that  I  refer  to  is  called 
"Sparks  of  Laughter  No.  2."  When  I 
picked  it  up,  to  while  away  what  I  often 
call  an  "idle  hour,"  I  had  no  notion 
that  it  would  so  greatly  influence  me. 
90 


Overset 

Yesterday  if  anybody  had  told  me  that 
ever,  even  after  years  of  application,  I 
could  learn  the  forensic  art,  I  should 
have  called  that  man — and  I  hope  the 
ladies  will  forgive  me  for  a  little  plain 
speech — a  prevaricator.  After  reading 
the  book,  especially  the  part  called  "Sug 
gestions  to  Toastmasters"  and  "How  to 
Tell  a  Funny  Story,"  I  feel  that  there  is 
no  audience  I  could  not  address  with 
what  our  French  brothers  call  savoir 
jaire.  "Toastmastering,"  the  first  piece 
of  advice  concludes,  "is  an  ornamental 
art.  I  have  tried  to  show  you  some  of 
its  first  principles.  Use  them  and  you 
will  not  go  far  wrong." 

So  much  for  that.  It  was  the  chapter 
on  "How  to  Tell  a  Funny  Story"  that 
made  the  deepest  impression  on  me,  an 
impression  as  deep  as  the  political  orator, 
who  was  somewhat  given  to  exaggerat 
ing,  made  on  Martin  W.  Littleton,  the 
well-known  New  York  lawyer.  "This 
fellow/'  said  Mr.  Littleton,  "was  ad 
dressing  a  meeting  one  night  in  my 
former  home  town,  Dallas,  Texas.  He 


Overset 

complained  bitterly  in  his  address  of  a 
certain  alleged  abuse  of  power. 

'  'Are  we  to  take  this  lying  down?' 
he  roared.  'No,  old  chap/  called  a  little 
man  from  a  back  seat,  'the  reporters'll 
do  that/  " 

Let  me  read  you  from  this  chapter 
"How  to  Tell  a  Funny  Story."  "Mem 
orize  your  stories.  Get  them  down  letter- 
perfect.  Don't  spoil  your  chance  to  earn 
a  laugh  by  hesitating,  stumbling,  recall 
ing,  apologizing.  Let  the  story  come 
trippingly  on  the  tongue.  Face  your 
self  in  the  mirror.  Tell  your  stories  to 
the  man  in  the  mirror.  Satisfy  him — 
completely — and  then  you  may  confi 
dently  expect  to  satisfy  a  larger  audi 
ence." 

Right  here,  dear  readers,  I  want  to 
say  that  I  did  that  all  last  evening.  I 
told  stories,  gazing  at  myself  in  the 
mirror,  all  yesterday  afternoon.  And 
my  wife,  who  is  my  severest  critic,  hear 
ing  the  gales  of  merriment  issuing  from 
my  room,  called  to  me  and  said,  "You 
must  be  having  a  good  time  in  there." 
92 


Overset 

"I  am,"  was  my  response.  And,  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  I  was.  And  what  is 
more,  my  friends,  it  was  good,  clean  fun. 
"Suppose  you  are  at  a  banquet  table 
and  are  called  upon  without  warning  to 
speak  on  a  subject  of  which  you  know 
little/'  Mr.  Anderson  continues.  "Self- 
deprecation  would  be  appropriate,  and 
if  you  did  indeed  speak  to  the  purpose, 
so  much  greater  your  credit  with  your 
audience  because  you  began  so  modestly. 
For  example:  'Mr.  Toastmaster  and 
gentlemen,  I  am  only  so  slightly  familiar 
with  the  subject  under  discussion  that  I 
fear  anything  I  might  say  would  remind 
you  of  the  man  who  recently  was  a 
Police  Court  prisoner' — and  then  the 
Police  Court  stuttering  story.  Or:  'Mr. 
Toastmaster  and  gentlemen,  I  am 
obliged  to  plead  dark  ignorance  of  the 
subject  that  has  been  so  ably  analyzed 
and  illumined,  and  if  I  should  attempt 
to  add  to  what  has  been  said  I  should 
certainly  fail  to  set  up  an  intelligent  con 
tact  with  this  audience,  as  did  the  young 
lady  who  for  the  first  time  in  her  life 

93 


Overset 

was  seated,  at  a  dinner,  next  to  so  high 
a  dignitary  as  a  Bishop/  and  go  on  with 
the  Bishop-pyjama  story." 

But,  dear  readers,  the  hour  is  growing 
late  and  there  are  other  and  brighter 
men  on  this  great  paper — yes,  there  are. 
I  am  afraid  you  are  trying  to  flatter  me 
— who  may  have  something  to  say  to 
you.  In  conclusion,  I  am  going  to  read 
you  Mr.  Anderson's  sound  advice,  which, 
if  you  follow,  it  will  not  be  long  until 
you  hear,  as  Mr.  Anderson  says/'George, 
tell  us  the  story  you  told  the  other  day 
at  the  club."  But  above  all,  says  Mr. 
Anderson,  a  few  minutes  a  day,  and 
every  day,  in  mirror  exercise.  "The 
power,"  he  concludes,  "to  tell  a  story  is 
profitable.  I  have  told  you  how  to  ac 
quire  this  power — but  whether  or  not 
dollars  and  power  and  satisfaction  shall 
result  depends  altogether  upon  your 
self." 

And  now,  dear  readers,  I  will  leave 
you,  somewhat  like  the  colored  man  who, 
gazing  at  the  final  half-inch  of  a  cheap 
cigar  he  was  smoking,  said,  "Veil,  Ay 

94 


Overset 

tank  Oi  am  g-g-g-gettin'  to  de  end  of 
mah  rope." 


NICKEL  PLATONISM 
I 

On  Knowledge 

Persons  of  the  Dialogue:  SOCRATES,  who 

is  the  narrator  of  the  dialogue;  and 

SYMPADEMUS,  a  companion. 

SYMP. — Now  whither  bound, Socrates? 
And  yet  I  need  not  ask  that  question; 
for  if  you  are  bound  for  any  place  where 
I  am  not  to  be,  your  destination  cannot 
matter  to  me;  for  I  am  desirous  of  ob 
taining  wisdom  from  you.  Nor  is  it 
otherwhere  to  be  obtained. 

Soc. — And  so,  Sympademus,  if  you 
had  your  wish,  I  should  not  proceed 
farther? 

That  would  be  my  desire,  Socrates. 

A  dozen  eggs  are  twelve  eggs,  are  they 
not? 

You  phrase  it  accurately,  Socrates. 

95 


Overset 

And  two  dozen  eggs  are  twenty-four 
eggs? 

Assuredly. 

And  two  dozen  hours  are  twenty-four 
hours? 

You  utter  much,  Socrates,  there. 

Do  or  do  not  twenty-four  hours  com 
pose  a  day? 

They  do,  Socrates,  they  do. 

Well,  then,  if  I  devoted  an  hour  to 
you,  and  that  augmented  your  wisdom, 
how  wise  would  it  make  you  if  I  devoted 
two  hours  to  you? 

I  should  gain  twice  the  wisdom. 

And  in  twenty-four  hours? 

Twenty-four  times. 

But  if  I  devoted  twenty-four  hours  to 
you,  who  else  in  the  world  would  gain 
wisdom — if,  as  you  well  say,  wisdom  is 
not  otherwhere  to  be  obtained? 

Nobody. 

Then  you  and  I,  Sympademus,  would 
share  all  the  wisdom  there  is  in  the 
world.  Is  wisdom — or  is  its  step-sister, 
knowledge — useful  or  desirable  for  its 
possession  alone? 

96 


Overset 

No  more  than  money,  if  it  could  not 
purchase  anything,  would  be. 

And  is  knowledge  useful,  or  even  ex 
istent,  unless  it  be  disseminated? 

That  I  cannot  answer. 

Shall  I  answer  it  for  you  in  an  apo 
logue  or  myth,  or  shall  I  argue  the  ques 
tion? 

Slip  me  the  myth,  said  Sympademus. 

Once  upon  a  time,  said  Socrates,  there 
was  a  man  who  had  spent  his  budding 
and  blooming  years  in  studies  of  various 
kinds;  and  his  particular  and  passionate 
interest  was  the  study  of  the  caesura  in 
alcaic  verses.  He  had  not  learned,  he 
thought,  all  there  was  to  be  known  of 
his  subject,  so  he  journeyed  to  the  uni 
versity  library  to  study  it  more  deeply. 
But  he  had  come  from  a  far  city,  and 
the  location  of  the  library  was  not 
known  to  him.  So  he  said  to  a  guard 
upon  the  Subway.  Where  ought  I  de 
train  for  the  university  library?  At 
116th  Street,  said  the  guard.  Now, 
Sympademus,  which,  in  your  opinion, 
takes  more  pains  and  ability  to  acquire: 

97 


Overset 

the  student's  knowledge  relating  to  the 
ensure  in  alcaic  verses,  or  the  Subway 
guard's  knowledge  that  the  station  at 
One  Hundred  and  Sixteenth  Street  is  in 
close  proximity  to  the  university  library? 

Surely,  Socrates,  the  knowledge  about 
the  caesura. 

But  if  the  man  who  has  the  knowl 
edge  about  the  caesura  does  naught  with 
it  but  add  to  it,  while  the  man  who 
knows  that  the  university  library  is  near 
the  One  Hundred  and  Sixteenth  Street 
station  constantly  is  disseminating  that 
information,  which,  do  you  say,  is  the 
more  useful?  Would  you  not  say  the 
Subway  guard? 

Indeed,  Socrates. 

Then  may  we  not  assume,  Sympade- 
mus,  that  wisdom  and  knowledge  are  not 
wisdom  and  knowledge  until  they  are 
disseminated  and  spread,  and  that  in 
proportion  as  they  are  scattered,  so  is 
their  usefulness  to  be  determined?  And 
that  in  proportion  as  they  are  withheld, 
so,  also,  is  their  uselessness  adjudicated? 

You  said  a  scrollful,  Socrates. 
98 


Overset 

Then,  Sympademus,  I  shall  be  on  my 
way;  for  I  have  other  matters  to  discuss 
with  Alcibiades.  Haply  I  shall  meet 
with  you  again. 

II 

On  Drinking 

Soc. — You  are  come  late  to  the  city 
this  morning,  O  son  of  Boobinias,  and 
your  eyelid  quivers,  like  that  of  a  man 
who  has  been  casting  dice  long  hours, 
and  crying  exhortations  and  supplica 
tions  to  the  ivory  cubes,  such  as  Event 
uate,  O  thou  seven!  For  mine  infant 
has  dearth  of  a  pair  of  new  sandals. 

SYMP. — Nay,  then,  Socrates,  you  are 
in  error  if  you  deem  me  to  have  been 
gambling,  for  I  did  but  while  away  the 
evening,  and  the  night  too,  at  a  bar;  or 
Demosthenes  the  orator  would  say,  im 
bibing  libations;  and  it  may  be  that  I 
was,  at  the  end  of  it,  slightly  jingled. 

Of  this  you  seem  unashamed,  Sym 
pademus. 

Why,  Socrates,  I  am  not  ashamed  of 
it  soever. 

99 


Overset 

But  if  it  had  been  said  of  you,  by  this 
one  or  that  one,  Sympademus  was 
jingled  yesternight,  you  would  feel  un 
ashamed? 

I  should  feel  no  shame  at  all. 

And  if  it  had  been  said  of  you,  Wow, 
but  Sympademus  had  an  epidermis  full, 
or  Sympademus  was  ossified,  you  would 
feel  no  shame? 

I  should  feel  no  shame  whatever. 

And  if  it  had  been  said  of  you,  Sym 
pademus  was  drunk? 

Why,  that,  Socrates,  as  you  know, 
would  overwhelm  me  with  shame,  and 
cause  me  to  have  great  distaste  for  my 
self. 

Yet  your  drinking  is  not,  would  you 
say,  a  question  of  nomenclature  at  all, 
is  it,  Sympademus? 

It  is,  Socrates,  and  it  is  not.  For  there 
is  a  potency  and  a  charm  in  the  names  of 
drinks,  which,  were  they  named  with  no 
such  euphuism,  would  have  no  appeal  to 
me — or  to  others — at  all.  There  is  the 
Tom  and  Jerry,  and  the  Sherry  Cobbler, 
and  the  Flip,  and  the  Mamie  Taylor,  and 
100 


Overset 

the  Tom  Collins,  and  the  Santiago,  and 
the  Clover  Club,  and  the  Angels'  De 
light,  and  the  Mint  Julep,  and  the  Alex 
ander,  and  the  Perfect,  and  a  thousand 
others,  most  of  which  I  tasted  last  night, 
and  all  of  which,  if  named  but  Alcohol 
— which,  in  effect,  they  all  are — I  should 
not  have  tasted.  So  that,  as  Aristo 
phanes  says,  rather  derails  your  trains  of 
thought.  Hey? 

Not  so,  Sympademus.  It  but  does 
clear  the  track  of  all  obstructions.  I 
do  not  hold  there  is  no  charm  in  the 
synonyms  for  Drink,  and  I  acknowl 
edge  the  appeal  in  the  mere  names  of 
deadly  decoctions.  But  if  you  had 
termed  the  drinks  of  yesternight  Al 
cohol,  you  would  not  have  tasted  them? 

Indubitably  not. 

And  if  you  had  not  tasted  them,  you 
would  not  have  been  drunk? 

Denial  of  that,  O  Socrates,  were  folly. 
Gainsaying  you  in  that  regard  were 
plumbing  the  depths  of  nuttiness. 

Then,  O  Sympademus,  though  I  am 
far  from  saying  to  you  what  I  began  to 

10 1 


Overset 

induct,  as  I  had  intended  to  discourse 
with  you  about  politics,  what  do  you  say 
if  we  proceed  to  the  house  of  Eukidios, 
who,  although  I  am  in  his  debt  for 
twelve  drachmas,  will,  I  think,  still  hang 
me  up  for  a  split  of  hemlock  juice. 

Ill 

On  Professionalism  in  Sport 

Soc. — Whence  come  you,  Sympade- 
mus,  with  your  golf  clubs  and  your  bag 
covered  with  plaid  of  the  Lacedaemonian 
clan;  and  what  have  you  been  doing? 
Playing  golf? 

SYMP. — Foolish  Interrogation  No.  268. 
Deem  you  I  have  been  shaving  my  beard 
with  these  implements? 

No,  Sympademus,  I  do  not.  If  I 
desire  to  know  whither  yonder  trireme 
is  bound,  would  I,  do  you  believe,  ask 
one  of  the  oarsmen? 

I  think  you  would. 

And  if  I  craved  the  knowledge  as  to 
who  won  a  game  of  baseball,  would  I 
not,  if  I  had  not  seen  the  game,  ask  one 
102 


Overset 

who     I     thought     had     observed     it? 

It  is  highly  conceivable. 

Well,  then,  as  I  am  desirous  to  know 
whether  you  have  been  playing  golf,  I 
put  the  question  to  you.  And  you,  your 
reverence  disintegrated  by  the  comic 
sculpture  of  Goldbergias,  thought  to  put 
the  bee  on  me  by  your  query? 

Indeed  I  did,  O  Socrates. 

Now  my  object  in  asking  you  was 
this:  You  have  been  playing  golf,  and 
not,  I  conjecture,  for  money?  That  is, 
you  have  not  received  money  because  of 
your  prowess  at  the  drive  or  your  del 
icacy  at  the  putt? 

Assuredly  not. 

What  is  your  profession,  Sympade- 
mus? 

I  am  an  insurance  solicitor. 

Do  you  solicit  policies  on  the  lives  of 
men  you  know,  or  on  those  of  men  you 
do  not  know? 

On  those  of  men  I  know,  and  it  is 
difficult  enough  for  me  to  see  those  men ; 
the  men  I  do  not  know  tear  up  my  very 
card  when  it  is  sent  in  to  them. 
103 


Overset 

And  did  you  ever  write  a  policy  on 
the  life  of  a  man  you  played  golf 
with? 

But  yesterday,  Socrates,  I  wrote  Apol- 
lodorus  a  5,000  drachma  20-year  endow 
ment,  with  annual  dividends.  The  best 
policy,  by  Zeus,  in  all  Hellas! 

Then  you  are  a  professional,  Sympade- 
mus. 

Nay,  I  am  an  amateur,  for  I  do  not 
make  any  money  selling  golf  supplies  or 
giving  instruction  in  the  game. 

But  if  you  sold  a  golf  club,  what 
would  your  profit  be  in  that? 

Oh,  perhaps  an  eikosipentarion  or  two. 

And  your  commission  on  a  5,000 
drachma  policy? 

That  would  be  about  100  drachmas, 
not  counting  the  renewals. 

But  if  you  sold  the  golf  club  you  would 
be  a  professional,  whereas  if  you  sold 
the  policy  to  a  friend  you  had  made  by 
playing  golf,  you  would  be  an  amateur? 

That  is  the  notion,  O  Socrates. 

Now  suppose  I  were  a  player  of  tennis, 
and  I  had  a  store  of  balls  and  rackets, 
104 


Overset 

and  Willie  Tilden  bought  a  racket  from 
me,  what  profit  would  I  make? 

You  would  make  one  drachma,  but 
you  would  be  a  professional. 

And  if  I  were  an  insurance  solicitor, 
and  a  good  player  of  tennis,  too,  and  I 
were  in  the  final  set  with  Willie  Tilden, 
and  there  was  a  point  I  might  get,  might 
I  not  say  to  Willie,  Will,  if  you  give  me 
a  50,000  drachma  policy,  I'll  flub  the 
ball  into  the  net? 

Indeed  you  might,  Socrates,  and  not 
do  it  in  such  a  bold,  obvious  manner, 
either. 

But  if  I  did  that  I  should  remain  an 
amateur? 

Oh,  indissolubly. 

Well,  then,  Sympademus,  it  seems  to 
me  there  is  a  vast  amount  of  hypocrisy 
about  the  ethics  of  sport  and  the  sport 
of  ethics.  A  sport,  I  hold,  is  as  clean  as 
the  men  who  play  it;  and  a  man  cannot 
be  prevented,  by  rules,  from  making 
money  out  of  his  skill.  Does  not  this 
talk  about  professionalism  overcome  you 
with  lassitude? 

105 


Overset 

In  addition  to  the  weariness,  Socrates, 
it  gives  me  a  shooting  pain,  localized 
and  acute. 

Then,  Sympademus,  we  are  in  accord. 
And  now  I  will  shoot  you  18  holes,  and 
if  I  win  you  may  write  me  a  2,500 
drachma  policy,  payable  to  Xanthippe. 

PROBABLY  the  esteemed  medical  pro- 
fesh  feels  the  same  way  about  the  sur 
geon  who  removed  his  own  appendix  as 
the  barbers  do  toward  their  patients 
when  they  say,  with  just  enough  contemp- 
tuousness,  "Shave  yourself,  don't  you?" 

GUILTIER  than  the  feeling  that  comes 
when  the  barber  says,  "I  see  you  shave 
yourself"  is  the  sensation  that  brings  the 
blush  when  the  automobile  repair  man 
observes,  "You  drive  this  car  yourself, 
don't  you?" 

DIFFIDENCE    was    under    discussion, 

One  man  confessed  that  it  always  makes 

him  feel  self-conscious  and  fearful  that 

the  elevator  man  will  hit  him,  when  he 

1 06 


Overset 

calls  his  floor.  "Six,  please,"  he  whis 
pers,  and  if  the  elevator  passes  the  floor 
he  doesn't  get  out  until  it  stops  at  some 
other  floor,  and  then  he  walks  back  to 
the  sixth.  Another  man  said  that  his 
first  night  in  a  newspaper  office  he 
wanted  a  copy  boy  and  he  didn't  dare 
shout  "Copy!"  lest  everybody  in  the 
office  would  stop  working.  "I  needn't 
have  worried,"  he  added.  "I  know  now 
that  nobody  in  a  newspaper  office  pays 
any  attention  to  that  loud  appeal — not 
even  the  copy  boys/' 

CHARLIE  CASE  is  dead,  and  why  he  was 
not  well  enough  known  to  have  received 
more  than  the  briefest  of  obituaries  is 
among  the  things  we  do  not  understand. 
Case  had  been  monologuing  in  vaudeville 
for  perhaps  twenty-five  years;  and  his 
monologue  was  always,  to  us,  funny  and 
usually  fresh.  The  last  time  we  heard 
him  was  at  Hammerstein's,  and  one  of 
his  stories  was  to  the  effect  that  he  was 
a  continuous  sufferer  from  the  injustice 
of  typographical  errors.  "They  always 
107 


Overset 

spell  my  name  wrong,"  he  complained. 
"Listen  to  this  from  the  Chicago  Trib 
une:  The  audience  at  the  Palace  The 
ater  was  convulsed  with  laughter  at  the 
greatest  comedian  of  modern  time. 
Chicago  will  always  have  a  warm  wel 
come  for  Walter  C.  Kelly/  " 

Case's  songs  were  the  best  of  his  offer 
ings.    Our  favorite  was: 

There  was  once  a  poor  young  man  who  was 

leaving  his  country  home, 
And  going  to  New  York  to  look  for  work. 
He  promised  his  old  mother  that  he'd  shun 

all  evil  companions 
And  never  take  a  drink  in  all  his  life. 

When  he  got  to  New  York  he  accepted  a 
position  in  a  quarry, 

And  while  there  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  some  college  students. 

He  little  thought  that  they  were  demons, 
for  they  wore  the  best  of  clothes, 

But  clothes  do  not  always  make  the  gentle 
man. 

One  night  he  met  the  fiends  and  they  invited 

him  to  drink, 

But  he  thought  of  his  promise  and  said  "No." 
But  they  laughed  and  they  jeered  and  they 

said  he  was  a  coward, 
Until  finally  he  drank  a  glass  of  lager  beer. 

1 08 


Overset 

When  he  saw  what  he  had  done  he  dashed 

the  glass  to  the  floor, 
And  staggered  to  the  door  with  delirium 

tremens, 
And  while  crazed  with  the  liquor  he  met  a 

Salvation  Army  lass, 
And  savagely  he  broke  her  tambourine. 

All  she  said  was  "Heaven  bless  you,"  as  she 
placed  a  mark  upon  his  brow, 

With  a  kick  she  had  learned  before  she  had 
been  saved. 

So,  kind  friends,  take  my  advice  and  shun 
the  fatal  glass  of  beer, 

And  don't  go  around  breaking  people's  tam 
bourines. 

'Tm  awful  popular,"  Case  would  say. 
"Here's  a  nice  notice  I  got  the  other 
day:  'Charlie  Case,  the  well-known  com 
edian,  is  back  in  New  York  again,  and 
we  hope  he  remains  for  a  long  time/ 
.  .  .  That's  from  the  Pittsburgh  Press." 

THE  Reverend  Bouck  White  was  "dis* 
respectful"  to  the  national  emblem,  and 
he  got  into  trouble.  But  this  is  a  broad 
land,  as  lands,  from  coast  to  coast,  go. 
Miss  Kay  Laurell,  for  instance,  who 
used  the  s.  s.  banner  as  her  investiture 
109 


Overset 

in  "The  Follies  of  1917,"  got  nothing  but 
applause;  and  Mr.  James  Buchanan 
Brady  recently  made  the  front  page  with 
the  Atlantic  City  story  that  his  newest 
bauble  was  an  American  flag  of  dia 
monds,  rubies,  and  sapphires,  costing 
$3,500. 

There  are  those  who  say  that  men  like 
the  Reverend  Bouck  White  are  in  the 
altruistic  game  for  the  money  they  get 
out  of  it.  Some  of  them  are,  perhaps, 
just  as  some  capitalists  are  in  the  money- 
making  game  for  the  fun  of  it;  but  the 
Reverend  Bouck  White's  income  last 
year  was  about  $450.  And  Upton  Sin 
clair,  in  "The  Price  I  Paid,"  in  a  recent 
Pearson  s,  says  that  for  all  the  money  he 
was  accused  of  making  out  of  socialism, 
he  is  down  to  a  couple  of  1912  suits  of 
clothes,  $10,  and  a  little  old  last  year's 
bicycle. 

A  LINE  in  our  otherwise  neglected  note 
book  reads  "Interchange.     Sim.";  and 
thirty-five  minutes  of  attempting  to  re 
call  the  significance  of  the  shorthand  has 
no 


Overset 

resulted  in  remembering  that  it  was 
jotted  to  remind  us  to  write  a  brochure 
entitled  "On  the  Interchangeability  of 
Similes." 

Well,  the  idea  is  this :  You  see  a  field 
thinly  covered  with  snow.  Blades  of 
grass  stick  up  above  the  snow.  What  it 
suggests  to  you — if  your  reactions  are 
like  ours — is  a  beard  protruding  through 
a  coast  of  shaving  lather.  That  picture, 
in  prose  or  poetry,  is  essentially  comic 
and  irreverent.  But  when  you  are  shav 
ing  and  it  occurs  to  you  that  your  beard, 
showing  through  the  lather,  is  like  the 
grass  peeping  through  the  snow,  you 
have  dignified  a  commonplace  thing; 
and  made  poetry,  of  a  sort,  out  of  prose. 

You  are  smoking  in  a  quiet  room.  The 
smoke  looks  like  the  impalpable  clouds 
trembling  over  the  summit  of  a  moun 
tain.  You  are  gazing  at  the  clouds  over 
Long's  Peak,  say,  and  they  remind  you 
of  the  smoke  of  a  genuine  seed-havana 
cigar.  .  .  .  You  see  a  beautiful  young 
woman,  and  her  neck  and  shoulders  are 
of  a  milky  whiteness;  remove  the  cap 


Overset 

from  a  bottle  of  Grade  A  milk,  and  say 
you  are  reminded  of  Miss  Justine  John 
son's  neck.  .  .  .  And  so  on,  as  we  pre 
tenders  say,  trying  to  give  the  impres 
sion  that  if  we  only  had  space,  we  might 
put  over  a  whale  of  an  idea,  when  the 
truth  is  that  we  have  even  diluted  the 
little  one  we  had. 

Now  that  the  history  textbooks  are 
under  scrutiny,  how,  we  rise  in  the  name 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  to 
inquire,  about  the  Elementary  Arithme 
tics?  "If  a  man  can  do  a  piece  of  work 
in  three  days" — What  sort  of  capitalistic 
stuff  is  this  for  children  to  absorb?  "If 
four  union  men,  working  seven  hours  a 
day,  can  do  a  piece  of  work  in  one  day" 
is  the  way  it  should  begin.  And  in  the 
schools  attended  by  laborers7  children 
the  problem  should  read,  "How  much,  at 
$4  an  hour,  will  they  make?"  And  in 
the  capitalists'  kids'  school  it  should  end, 
"Why  does  it  take  the  fellow  three  days 
to  do  it?" 

And  it  is  time  to  investigate  the  teach- 
1 12 


Overset 

ing  of  Latin.  Heedless  were  we  of  wo 
man  until,  for  instance,  we  came  to  Sec. 
18,  Lesson  I,  Collar  and  Daniell's  "First 
Latin  Book/'  It  began,  "Translate  into 
Latin:  1.  Where  is  the  little  girl?  2. 
Where  are  the  little  girls?  3.  Are  the 
girls  small?"  And  Freud  only  knows 
what  influence  those  searching  queries 
had  on  a  young  and  plastic  mind. 

And  how  can  we  who  were  thrall  to 
the  vinous  Latinity  of  "Collar  and  Dan- 
iell"  ever  revere,  as  we  ought  to,  the 
Eighteenth  Amendment  when  this  is 
burned  on  the  waxen  tablets  of  adoles 
cent  memory?  "A  girl  gives  a  sailor 
some  wine  and  water.  The  wine  she 
carries  in  a  pretty  cup.  He  praises  the 
pretty  cup  and  the  wine.  The  water  he 
does  not  care  for."  Translate  into  Latin 
indeed!  A  lot  of  us  translated  it  into  life. 

IN  MR.  KEITH  PRESTON'S  "Splinters" 
occurs  his  line  to  Miss  Gather,  "Singing 
'Willa,  git  Willa!  git  Willa!"'  and  all 
yesterday  it  zoomed  through  our  head. 
And  it  occurred  to  us  that  a  music  critic, 

113 


Overset 

wearied  of  "Rigoletto"  and  "II  Trova- 
tore,"  might  sing:  "Is  it  weakness  of  in 
tellect,  Verdi?  I  cried";  but  that  was  as 
far  as  we  could  go  with  it. 

"BRAINS,  manufacturing  ability,  ad 
vertising  judgment,  and  sales  intelli 
gence  —  there"  —  Collier  s  Weekly  is 
pointing — "is  the  programme  for  Com 
petitive  Nineteen  Twenty-two.  And  if 
you  like,  you  may  tie  them  all  together 
with  that  salutary  dagger  of  words  of 
Thoreau,  who  said: 

'  'It  is  not  enough  to  be  busy.    What 
are  you  busy  about  ?' " 

It  is  not  enough  to  be  busy  about  to 
say  that  when  we  want  to  tie  things  to 
gether,  one  of  the  things  we  use  least 
frequently  is  a  dagger.  But  would  the 
thing  that  Thoreau  was  busy  about  en 
dear  him  to,  for  example,  the  writer  of 
that  "For  a  Competitive  Year"  editor 
ial?  What  is  Thoreau's  message,  as  we 
of  the  Planet  Boosters  (Motto:  "A  Big 
ger  Solar  System  for  Next  Year")  say 
to  the  Walden  Rotary  Club? 
114 


Overset 

Now,  Thoreau  was  a  pencil  maker. 
Did  he  concentrate  on  pencil-making? 
No.  He  kept  diaries  and  wrote  poetry. 
What  sort  of  March  to  the  Goal  of  Am 
bition  is  that?  And  what  would  the 
advertisers  say  if  a  magazine  quoted  a 
better  known  statement  of  Thoreau's? 
If  we  were  an  advertiser,  we'd  cancel 
our  contract  with  any  magazine  that  re 
printed  Thoreau's  "Most  of  the  luxuries 
and  many  of  the  so-called  comforts  of 
life  are  not  only  indispensable  but  pos 
itive  hindrances  to  the  elevation  of  man 
kind?" 

AT  THE  savings  bank  hangs  a  picture 
of  a  bread  line  and  a  line  at  the  teller's 
window.  "On  which  line  will  you  be  at 
60?"  it  asks.  The  likelihood  is  that  we 
shall  be  at  the  teller's  window,  with 
drawing  enough  to  pay  an  income-tax 
instalment.  And  it  is  a  more  depress 
ing  thought  than  the  speculation  upon 
being  in  the  bread  line  at  60. 

Those  who  at  60  still  are  concerned 
with  savings-bank  deposits,  are,  it  seems 

"5 


Overset 

to  us,  the  cautious  and  the  fearful.  Life 
has  beaten  the  breadliners;  but  the  sav 
ings-bank  liners  probably  never  even 
qualified  to  enter  the  fight. 


She  Invite  Him  Into  the 
House?"  asks  the  advertisement  for  the 
"Book  of  Etiquette";  and  explains  the 
illustration  thus:  "They  have  just  re 
turned  from  a  dance.  It  is  rather  late, 
but  the  folks  are  still  up.  Should  she 
invite  him  into  the  hourse  or  say  good 
night  to  him  at  the  door?  Should  he  ask 
permission  to  go  into  the  house  with  her? 
Should  she  ask  him  to  call  at  some  other 
time?"  One  answer  crowds  upon  an 
other's  heels,  so  fast  they  follow.  First, 
we'd  never  take  seriously  the  law  of  eti 
quette  laid  down  by  anybody  who, 
speaking  of  the  not-yet-retired  parents, 
says,  "the  folks  are  still  up."  What  sort 
of  girl  has  "folks"?  Dear,  dear!  not  to 
say  Fie,  fie!  Second,  if  it's  the  kind  of 
dance  now  current,  the  folks  wouldn't 
still  be  up;  they'd  be  up  already.  And 
as  to  what  she  should  do,  no  book  ever 
116 


Overset 

published  can  help  her.  The  questions 
are  all  local  issues,  depending  on  her  and 
him.  Our  solution  is  that  she  ought  to 
ask  him  in  to  breakfast. 

MAYBE  the  Stage  is  bad,  and  maybe 
the  Church  is  good;  and  maybe  the  truth 
is  somewhere  between.  We  have  seen 
dozens  of  poor  shows  and  heard  dozens 
of  good  sermons;  but  we  usually  feel  re 
gret  when  the  curtain  falls  on  the  last 
act,  and  relief  when  the  benediction 
comes. 

"WILL  some  bright  young  man  in  your 
assemblage,"  asks  F.  A.  S.  Jr.,  "explain 
why  Felix  Fay  and  this  here  guy  of  The 
Blood  of  the  Conquerors'  and  all  the 
gentlemen  and  ladies  of  the  other  books 
that  meet  with  popular  approval  can 
carry  on  their  affairs  to  our  wildest  ap 
plause;  but  Charles  Garland  (who  is 
more  Felix  than  Fay  himself)  is  entered 
in  the  headlines  as  a  nut,  is  greeted  with 
a  storm  of  hisses  and  held  up  everywhere 
to  the  scorn  of  a  justly  just  populace?" 

First,  because  the  craving  for  romance 
117 


Overset 

is  universal;  and  if  people,  through 
cowardice  or  a  color-blindness  that 
causes  them  not  to  recognize  romance 
when  they  see  it,  don't  get  it,  they'll 
take  it,  through  books  or  plays,  vicar 
iously.  Second,  young  Mr.  Garland  isn't 
condemned  by  everyone  as  a  nut;  for 
all  we  know,  he  may  be  the  only  right- 
thinking  man  in  the  world.  Of  course, 
a  dead  man  or  a  character  in  fiction  is 
allowed  a  lot  of — but  that  provokes  a 
fraction  of  an  idea.  This  is  it : 

Shelley  neglected  his  Harriet; 

Byron,  they  say,  was  a  sinner. 
But,  honestly,  I'm  like  a  worker  in  crime 

If  I  got  home  late  to  dinner. 

Burns  was  a  bear  with  a  beaker; 

Poe  raised  particular  hob. 
Let  me  but  sin  with  a  jigger  of  gin, 

Zippity  zip!  goes  my  job. 

Socrates  had  a  Xanthippe; 

Wagner  had  words  with  his  wife. 
I  never  joke  at  the  conjugal  yoke.    .    .    . 

Gosh,  it's  a  Puritan  life! 

"FOUR-FIFTHS  of  the  difficulties  in  the 
world,"  said  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  "come 
118 


Overset 

from  suspicions."  We  didn't  read  that 
until  yesterday  morning,  but  we  devoted 
the  whole  day  to  investigating  the  figures 
and  found  them  almost  correct.  Eighty- 
one  and  two-tenths  per  cent,  of  the 
difficulties  in  the  world  come  from  sus 
picions.  And  ninety-seven  per  cent,  of 
those  suspicions  are  not  baseless. 

It  has  been  this  Turret's  contention 
that  most  of  the  world's  woes  might  be 
avoided — or  at  any  rate  alleviated — by 
scrapping  the  suspicion  that  somebody, 
or  everybody,  is  trying  to  put  something 
over  on  you.  Most  persons  would  rather 
be  overpaid  than  underpaid;  and  it  is 
the  fear  of  underpayment,  of  making  a 
bad  bargain — in  money,  love,  art — that 
keeps  up  the  supply  of  unprogress.  And 
not  so  much  the  fear  of  being  underpaid, 
perhaps,  as  the  fear  of  having  the  fact 
of  underpayment  known. 


THE  END 


119 


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